Where Words Fail: Book 5: The Invasion of Omashu
by TEi Has Pants
Summary: Smellerbee and Longshot finally arrive in Omashu, only to find that the Fire Nation has conquered and is occupying the city. To make matters worse, rumor has it that the crowned prince and princess of the Fire Nation are visiting...
1. Chapter 1

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Chapter 1: I don't care about imaginary boundaries, but somehow I'm afraid to go over them**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte, and this chapter's cover can be found here:

sioute(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/WWF-5-1-150282377

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"Spirits," Bee whispered, the word - and her relation to it - heavy and metallic in Longshot's chest, like an arrowhead lodged against his ribs, scraping the bones. He felt the weight and it took all his power to not curse aloud alongside her.

Omashu had fallen. Oh, Spirits, it had _fallen_ and suddenly things couldn't become any more skewed. Just a few days ago, everything had seemed to have been going so _right_, but now - flags of black fire on a maroon backdrop were draped across the sloped walls that had at one point kept the Fire Nation from entering, such a familiar, awful sight. By now, he should have been used to it...should have, _should_ have, but Omashu had been their last hope, and Pipsqueak and The Duke were supposed to be here, safe, ready to ride alongside himself and Smellerbee, and the Freedom Fighters were supposed to be one step closer to reuniting, and and and...it just wasn't fair. It wasn't _any_ fair. Couldn't they get a break in this war?

His hands tightened around the leather reins for his ostrich horse, recently (and finally) dubbed Fletcher. Smellerbee must have heard the leather squeal in protest under Longshot's unyielding grasp, because the next thing he realized was that a comforting hand had found its way to his forearm. He turned away from the, the mess, the _abomination_ that the Fire Nation had created, saw Smellerbee staring back at him with eyes narrowed. "You gonna be okay, Longshot?"

He shook his head and closed his eyes. He couldn't tell. This was almost just too much to take in, wasn't it? What could they do now in the face of this? He liked to pride himself on staying level-headed, but this problem just felt - too big. Like he couldn't wrap his mind around it.

"It'll be okay," Smellerbee whispered. She turned back to glance at the city, a determined frown on her curled lips. "The Duke an' Pipsqueak are alright. If they didn't manage to get outta there, they'd hold strong. They're tough cookies. All the same...we should do something about it."

Longshot sighed through his nose and turned his attention to the distant city, its conical, mountain-like shape sending a multitude of spires reaching up for the gloomy sky. Was she suggesting they actually go _in_ there?

"We don't have the manpower to liberate a place the size of Omashu." Smellerbee shook her head, her hair whipping about her face, ruffled by a light breeze tickling past them. "We're going to be stealthy and we're going to search their prison cells. That's all."

Longshot leaned back into Fletcher's saddle and felt a grin forming on his face. That sounded more doable...they hadn't been able to liberate that town with the curved, water-like architecture, and that was a fraction of a fraction of the size of Omashu. Sure, they'd had the Boulder working against them at first, but Longshot figured the Boulder equaled out to a dozen or so Firebenders.

"Exactly," Smellerbee said, flicking back a strand clump of bangs that had gone astray and threatened to get in her eyes. "Let's get back down to the bottom of the hill, leave Surestance 'n Fletcher here with some feed and water. It'll be easier for us to get into Omashu undetected without 'em."

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Omashu was a city made entirely of vertical cones, the pointed ends scraping against the clouds; there were maybe four or five of these massive spires, all of Omashu's houses and businesses mounted in tiers along the cones, the center one the tallest and sporting Omashu's palace at the very tip. Longshot remembered, very distantly, seeing pictures of buildings with towers similar to, well, _all_ of Omashu. A long time ago, in a vastly different lifetime. (_A warm, slender hand tracing lines across the parchment bound together to form a book, an actual __book__, not just a scroll, while a voice read aloud the characters highlighted by unknown fingertips, so comforting, so familiar, yet so alien because of the yawning, chronological chasm between then and now._) Cast entirely out of the same brown stone made up of the surrounding mountains, a wall - low and not as vast as Ba Sing Se's - had been erected about the city's edge, giving Longshot the strange impression that they existed to prevent any of the buildings from sliding off the conical slopes and vanishing into the abyssal valley forming a ring around Omashu itself.

At one point, he was certain, there had been _only_ stone. But now, buildings with metal fixtures surging out from their bulk had joined those without - the metalwork red or brown or charcoal-gray, billowing plumes of noxious black smoke into the sky, churning out war machines and weaponry. Longshot would have scowled. The Fire Nation had violated poor Omashu with its industrialist ways, converting a place that had once (and maybe still did) serve as a home to innocent bystanders. To the archer, it felt like walking into a rowdy tavern and seeing a waitress being manhandled by a man with more brains below the waist...only now, only _now_, Longshot wouldn't be able step in to save the victim, none of the three of them would have, and the brute would walk off without anyone raising so much as their voice (let alone a hooked sword, a sinewy dagger, or a nocked bow).

Amidst the houses and the spires, rising above all that had been Omashu's to begin with, stood a statue of a man wearing Fire Nation regalia - robes and armor, together a combination seen only on the highest officers in the military and high nobility of the Fire Nation fighting outside the military's purview (often because of their birth rank). As a Freedom Fighter, Longshot remembered - vividly - putting arrows into the backs of many officers decorated as such, each kill gratifying, almost a high, as if he were sticking it to the Fire Nation personally. But - this statue, there was too much out of place about it. The armor was too extravagant, the robes had more layers to them than an onion, and the ornate mantle holding his topknot in place was so decorative that Longshot had never seen another one like it. The piece looked almost identical to the Fire Nation insignia currently decorating the walls of Omashu.

And then the statue's face - it's _face_ - it bore into you, eyes glaring hatefully, greedily. Even cast in stone, Longshot felt pervaded by it, how it wanted to steal his land, his food, his hope, leave him rotting face-down on the ground with absolutely nothing to his name - and then, after a sufficient amount of suffering had been seen too, it would land the finishing blow, and it would not be a _slow_ death from there, oh no, it would hurt, it would _burn_, and it would not stop until the man carved of stone allowed the cavalcade of torment crawl to end.

"Yeah," Smellerbee mumbled, shuddering and hugging herself as if a fell chill had passed between them. "I feel it, too. I...I think that's Fire Lord Ozai."

Huh. Longshot supposed it made sense...no other man could be so monstrous to incite such fear, could there be? Of all the Fire Lords to sit on the throne since this war started a hundred years ago, they said Ozai was the cruelest - that he did things to his opponents, even to his own countrymen, his forefathers would never have dreamed of.

It had taken an hour to get this close to the city - it was within zipline distance now, and all Longshot needed to do was stop shaking long enough to hit his damn mark with the arrow.

The sky was overcast, great, big, roiling clouds blocking out the sun - as if foretelling of some kind of omen, as if the Freedom Fighters would not find what they wanted here.

As if they may not walk away alive.

But was that the clouds, or the statue? Or was Longshot just being too - too paranoid? Why was he losing his nerve all of a sudden in the face of this adversity? It sucked. It wasn't like him at all.

Smellerbee patted him on the shoulder a couple of times, squeezing gently - encouragement sloshed over him like taking a dip in the lake, and he exhaled the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. She grinned at him. "It's alright. Just a statue. It's makin' me nervous as all hell, too...but what are the chances that the Fire Lord is in Omashu, you know? I bet he's got his fat, happy ass in the Fire Nation right now just so nobody can pull a Smellerbee 'n Longshot on him."

Longshot's mouth quirked into a half-grin, and he nodded. Tilting the brim of his hat up, he trained his eyes to the top of Omashu's wall - Fire Nation soldiers stood on guard several yards apart, staring outward - armed with pikes - looking bored...ah! He drew Bee's attention by tapping her on the shoulder and pointing. One trooper remained upright only because of the pillar of rock he had slumped up against, partially obscured by a miniature lookout tower. The soldier was low-ranked enough that he didn't have a mask to go with his helmet, and judging by the way his eyes drooped, and the trail of saliva trickling down the side of his mouth...yes. A sleeper! That was their point of entry, and the lookout tower provided a blind spot if the pair were going to ascend the walls of Omashu from beneath it.

That was the only way in. While scouting around the valley, they had found only a sewer drain (impassable for them, given how much sludge and waste flowed from it; they'd need a Waterbender to ascend something that perilous), and the city's main entrance - connected to the mainland by a humungous stone slab bridge, but blockaded by about ten Fire Nation troops all in close proximity of each other.

So. Swallowing the nerves threatening to give out beneath him, Longshot withdrew from his bag of supplies a sturdy length of rope. The coils were rough on his fingertips, but so tightly-wound that they didn't pierce the skin or leave splinters. Eyeballing the distance between their hiding spot just behind a hill and Omashu's wall, he estimated how much rope he'd need to make it the whole distance...hmm. Yeah. Should be enough, with a few feet to spare. That would be plenty. He went to work, tying a solid knot around the arrow's shaft; he knocked it in his bow and drew it back, the tension pulsating in his fingers, his arms, his shoulders - the string smooth, but not slick, in his hand. Aiming - aiming...there! He released, feeling a blast-breeze rushing past his face, left by the arrow's slipstream. The rope hissed as it unraveled beside him, a great big pile unfurling, like noodles - and the distant, satisfying sound of arrow piercing stone. Very distinct, very gratifying, because it was such a _solid_ noise. It connected with the lookout tower, not ten feet out from where the dozing guard stood; his head snapped up for a moment, eyes wide, confused - and when a quick glance around yielded nothing, his head slumped forward again.

Beside him, Smellerbee grinned. "Nice shot."

He beamed back.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Jet had been able to climb trees with these swords. She, herself, had used them once in the swamp to pull herself up through a tunnel made mostly of unpacked soil in order to escape that cave Longshot's ZomBee hallucination had taken place in (an exhilarating, satisfying experience)...but now, the crescent-bladed hand guards of Jet's swords would get the opportunity to bite through - from the looks of it - limestone. She didn't know much about it, or rocks in general really (something Mortar would have teased her about: _"You're from the __Earth Kingdom__ and you don't have any knowledge on what types of stone there are?" _Her mind ignored the mental-Mortar it had erected, and she decided she agreed with herself; she didn't need any of her (even jocular) criticisms right now). But Longshot said Omashu's wall was porous, and his eyes were better than hers - and it wasn't like she had any reason to doubt him.

The swords would catch. She just needed the right momentum and an impact with enough power behind it to connect. Then power up, power up, that's how it always was when it came to climbing with the swords. Every muscle burning, screaming, working - sweat percolating, breath hot and hard and spiny in her throat. But it was fast, and she wouldn't fall and it would be a familiar thing now, not like that time under the swamp, where it was just a test - where she was simply imitating Jet.

As Longshot worked on testing their swing line, Smellerbee fidgeted in her armor, adjusting the straps holding Jet's swords in place. Keeping them crossed over her back, as per usual, was practical for travel purposes, but she'd been finding over the past several battles and sudden confrontations that she struggled to free them with anything resembling efficiency that way. It felt - it felt more natural, much faster and easier, to grab down to her sides and yank them free of their straps. The timing in this little stunt she and Longshot were about to pull off was gonna be so tight that keepin' the damn things on her back was just a mistake waiting to happen; if the swords didn't come free of the snap-restraints the first time she pulled on them, she'd either dislocate her shoulder as only one handle impacted into the stone, or wind up as a flat-chested, boyish smear on the city's walls.

Not pretty, either way, and she hardly wanted to end up as a Smellerbee-shaped stain with so much left to fight for. So with a little bit of manipulating and constructive rebuilding, she managed to secure the slings acting as the swords' sheaths around her waist, like a belt, the hilts of the blades resting on her hips and pointing inward.

It was because of this last fact that Longshot suggested Smellerbee ride the rope above him; she snerked as his face told of his lack of desire to get his rear end gouged out by the diamond-blade pommels on Jet's swords, and all she could do was shake her head and giggle.

"Fine, fine. You're heavier than I am anyway, it'd screw up the momentum for me if you were on top."

Longshot arched a brow, his cheeks scrawled with red; was that an innuendo in Smellerbee's pocket, or was she just happy to see him? Laughing again (because of the nerves? That statue _was_ creepy, and they couldn't be any more out of their depth, Longshot had been right about that much), she tossed her head back like she'd seen the snobby, rich girls do in villages they had visited on their trip to Ba Sing Se, keeping her nose upturned in mockery of their snooty attitudes. "That's hardly befitting for a young lady such as myself."

Ah, yes - but that would imply Smellerbee acted like the traditional young lady in the first place. Longshot's eyes twinkled. He was glad that she didn't.

She grinned. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with me being on top. You'd like it and you _know_ it." As she spoke, she grabbed the remaining coils of rope lying on the grass between them, the green blades poking at her gloved hands. She reeled it in, drawing as much slack out as she could, giving a sharp tug when it had become taut. The arrow stuck firm into the limestone, and she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Longshot wore a calm grin on his face.

"Excellent shooting, as always," Smellerbee praised, clasping the rope tightly with both hands. "Now grab on so we can do this something proper."

Poised to take off, Smellerbee glanced over the chasm separating the hilltop from Omashu, feeling a warm breeze whistle past. This would be fun. Scary as hell, but fun - her mind meandered back to a simpler time, the scent of honey poignant in the air, laughing, shirtless, soaked to the bone - the lake, sprawling out before her, a massive, silver scale glittering under the open sunlight. Most of the other Freedom Fighters watching as she vaulted away from the tree bark, rough on the soles of her bare feet, grabbing onto the rope swing, and releasing when it arced far enough over the middle so that she could cannonball beneath the lake's surface, letting the cold water suck her in, absorb her.

"Ahh."

The sigh drew a questioning glance from Longshot as the archer moved into place behind Smellerbee, grasping the rope as well. Smellerbee craned her head back to look at him and said, "You remember the rope swing back in the forest?"

He nodded, unsure of where Smellerbee intended to go with this line of thought; she could see him working to draw the parallels until finally shaking his head and shrugging.

"I hope this doesn't make that not fun anymore." She smirked. "On three?"

Another nod, and Smellerbee began the count, her pulse thick and wild between her ears. Before she could really register it, they had charged off the hill's peak and her feet were peddling the naked air, wind tearing at her face, her eyes going dry, cheeks cold. Her clothes ruffled, the wind howled into her ears, blowing her hair back - it was thrilling, exhilarating, her heart screaming against her ribs - and there was the wall, so close, rising up and ready to pound her unless she -

released

- her arms, already wailing in agony from gripping the rope, surged down to the hilts of Jet's swords, she snapped them free, whipped them around and brought them to bare.

_**TCHONK!**_

The golden, glimmering crescents - the hand guards to Jet's swords - buried their teeth into the wall, the impact jarring Smellerbee's entire body, her bones just short of leaping free of her skin. The wind's chill was gone, now, just gentle warmth radiating out of the sunbaked stone, pressing her skin, heating her clothes and armor, and there was no time to stick around here now that she'd connected, use the momentum and climb, climb, climb –

Muscles burned, bones ached, sweat percolated beneath her headband; hauling herself upward with Jet's swords, each breath felt like a plume of smoldering embers billowing through her nostrils, in and out, in and out. The stone's surface crunched underneath the toes of her boots as she pulled one sword free at a time, only to pull it up, over her head, and bury it into the stone again, then to do it with the other arm.

Dust sprinkled down with each one, and Smellerbee kept her head forward. Getting that in her eyes? Bad news, and it helped not knowing how much higher the wall towered above them anyway. Just keep breathing, the sun at her back, its heat from in front, and only the sounds of Jet's swords and her feet and Longshot's feet to keep her company. She didn't keep track of how much time had elapsed, either, because that would be another mistake, a folly that would mean she admitted to her strength giving out, exhaustion setting in -

No! Gritting her teeth and freeing the sword again, bringing it up, over, and down, up, over and down. And then, and then -

- the sword didn't bite, there was only air to greet her, and Smellerbee hurled her arm over the ledge. The top, finally! Her breath became less labored simply by the thought, and she wrestled the rest of her body up and over, rolling off and landing in a crouch. The dozing guard slouched only a few feet away, his helmet bobbing up and down, gentle sighs escaping his lips.

Longshot hauled himself over as well, landing beside Smellerbee; she placed a finger to her lips and cast a sideways glance at him, nodding in the direction of the guard. No time to feel relieved just yet - though solid ground beneath her feet, and the thought of not having to work so hard to move anywhere, made it appealing to not call it a day right here. There might yet be other Freedom Fighters to save.

Standing upright, Smellerbee felt a passing summer breeze waft by and pushed back the growing temptation to close her eyes and succumb to it. With footfalls lighter than a feather (Jet had taught them well, about how the art of stealth could mean a victory against an enemy far more powerful than they were - she always _had_ preferred drawing blood where possible, but their leader had praised her on her sneaking skills), Smellerbee hooked Jet's swords back into place and motioned for Longshot to follow.

The archer glanced at her and nodded, using a few feet of the rope to pluck the arrow free from where it had been lodged; no need to waste good supplies, after all (another valuable lesson). He began to coil it up using his right hand and elbow to support it, tip-toeing past the soldier as he did so.

Smellerbee planted her hands on the wall framing the inside of the city and tried to - to take in the damage, because seeing it up close was a _lot_ different from afar. Outside the city, the alterations the Fire Nation had put in place had looked strictly cultural and nothing more, but that wasn't even the start of it. Entire houses lay as piles of rubble, walls crumbled to bits, the maroon roof tiles cracked and shattered around the remains like flower petals scattered at a funeral. Shops had been shoved aside - how? With machines, no doubt, or thanks to the Dai Li that had allied themselves with the Fire Nation - squashed almost comically, three sides plowed inward while the last would bulge from all the detritus it contained. In their places were iron-laden workshops, also made out of stone, erected directly on top of the fallen homes and businesses of the people that used to (still did?) live here. Creating weapons, no doubt - more ways to kill enemies to the Fire Nation, more ways to oppress those too tenacious to fall.

If Pipsqueak and The Duke _were_ still here, they wouldn't be in very good condition to help Longshot and Smellerbee, let alone escape from this awful place.

Okay. She grit her teeth and narrowed her eyes. There'll be time for that stuff later. Right now, work on a plan.

She glanced at Longshot, but he, too, seemed preoccupied staring at the fallen city; it was almost like being back in Ba Sing Se after leaving that cave at Lake Laogai's edge. How had the Fire Nation managed to take Omashu? Did they prefer the old-fashioned Dragon-of-the-West style siege? (Skillet and Sneers may've been the military history buffs in the Freedom Fighters, but Smellerbee wasn't _completely_ ignorant._)_ Or were they more fond of Princess Azula's trickery and manipulations? Maybe the hell-bitch had helmed the operation directly, because if she could ninja Ba Sing Se out of Earth Kingdom control, then Omashu'd probably have been a cakewalk. If what Smellerbee had heard about Azula was true, she was a frightening, brilliant military mind.

No, too much distraction. Smellerbee shook her head and cast her eyes downward; the ground was a few stories away, and the nearest rooftop was too far to jump to without the proper momentum, so that was out of the question. The wall dropped down too sharply for the Freedom Fighters to slide down it, too...but that was alright, because Longshot had already readied the arrow with the rope tied around it again, the opposite end of the rope tied around a nearby lantern post. Good. A makeshift zipline beat the hell out of climbing down the wall itself.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Mai scoffed, rolling her narrow, amber-tinged eyes. What in the world had she been thinking - what sort of zen yin-yang crap had she let Zuko feed her? She swore, the man had been stuck in exile with his kooky uncle for far too long, because he had absorbed that herbs-and-tea attitude like a sponge and lapsed into it far too often.

"_'Visit your family, Mai,'_" she echoed, and for all the self-control she exerted over herself, she felt the words slide out like knives, coated in venomous sarcasm. She may as well be speaking out of her sleeve; she could feel the weight of her blades, light but numerous, waiting in the eaves for the proper time to be thrown. Spirits knew it wouldn't come to her in Omashu, though, even with Azula around to stir things up. "_'Your family probably misses you, Mai. It'll do you good to see them, Mai.'_ You're going to be the death of me, Zuko, and it's going to be a long, slow death. I'm going to be _bored_ to death because you're making me play familial politics, while Azula and Ty Lee are out there enjoying themselves."

Zuko smirked, and Mai found herself quashing the urge to argue with his smarminess. It wasn't hard. She had a lot of training, keeping things bottled up. Growing up in a noble family did that to you - be seen, not heard, _et cetera_, _et cetera_. She could express herself in front of Zuko, but...but sitting in formal attire, legs folded beneath her, with Zuko seated beside her, his official Fire Nation armor and robes donned...not _here_. Just keep your arms at your sides, clench your fists if you have to - you could get away with that sort of stuff. Nobody ever noticed, since the only thing other nobles pretended to pay attention to was your face.

It'd been a while since she'd been to Omashu-slash-New Ozai (she preferred 'Omashu' because it was far less tacky) - she'd left at Azula's behest to hunt down the then-fugitive Zuko and his uncle, Iroh. And that had been genuinely _fun_, although heaven forbid she let either Azula or Ty Lee see her crack a smile. She was out of her parents' oppressive purview, free to do and say _as_ she pleased, _when_ she pleased (which was rarely; old habits and all that). But time did little to make this place any more interesting. In this particular office in the city's palace, the beige stone walls had not changed - they were still plain, flat, uninteresting even when obscured by the maroon and black colors of the Fire Nation's finest furnishings. Tapestries, obnoxious, gaudy vases perched on glossy, wooden tables that screeched more than boasted the elitist atmosphere of the place, and those changing screens with the paper that was thick enough to keep you decent, but cast a very clear silhouette of your body. Mai hated those screens; it wasn't like you'd use one in this room for anything other than showing off the fact that you had it. This was a public place, a place of meeting, of keeping (seen but not heard) for the other nobles to fawn over you.

(Thinking about that time also made her think about Ba Sing Se. When Zuko saw sense, came back to the Fire Nation at the end of the Ba Sing Se invasion, things just seemed, felt, _right_ to Mai; Zuko, at least, was someone she didn't hate in the world.)

(Mai wondered, idly, if there was a psychiatrist out there willing to examine just how messed up her relationship with the Fire Prince was. She imagined the bill could only have been footed by the Fire Lord himself, if that were the case.)

Sitting at a broad, square table set low to the floor, a rough carpet baring the black flame representing the Fire Nation pressing into their shins, Mai crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. "Zuko, seriously. Was the capital getting too boring for you that you needed to see New Ozai for yourself? It's just another miserable little Earth Kingdom city."

"I've seen a _lot_ of miserable Earth Kingdom towns," Zuko murmured, his eyes flickering downward for a moment. Sitting to his right, Mai could only see the unscarred half of his face; with his hair pulled back into a topknot held in place with a flame-shaped crest, she could clearly see the golden orb that was his eye harden for a moment - but only briefly, before softening again, as if shame burdened him down (and oh, how she knew it did, that boy was nothing but a walking guilty conscience, if their time at Ember Island taught her anything). "Oma - New Ozai, at least, looks like it was a grand place once. There are many others out there that may as well be ghost towns with impoverished spirits floating around."

Mai sighed again. She wasn't very much into the analytical stuff; it was easier to just accept the fact that things were the way they were without having to know why. The grass grew, the wind billowed, the Fire Nation was great, all of that stuff - just givens. Zuko being angsty? Another fact of life that she couldn't help. It's not like the man didn't have his reasons (the burn scar on the left side of his face, surrounding his eye, was tribute enough of that), but Zuko's problems were ones he could only sort out on his own volition.

Still, helping him with them while waiting for her parents and obnoxious brother to arrive would at least pass the time. Wasn't the best idea in the world, but with an indifferent, mental shrug, it was better than just sitting on her ass. Besides...she did kind of want to know about his time as a fugitive. He rarely opened up about those months, and Mai only knew so much.

"Do you, um...do you want to talk about it?"

Zuko paused. Mai cast him a sideways glance, saw his head bow slightly; his eyelids slid closed and he looked, so much so, like he had just started to doze - dressed up in his Prince's robes and all. It was kind of...ugh, kind of _cute_. She felt a smile threatening to pull at the corner of her mouth despite herself. Still, as silly as it was, the offer had been put out on the table; if living as the daughter of a noble had taught her anything else, it was not to withdraw your hand until the person you bargained with shook it or turned away.

"There was a time, early in my travels with Uncle, that we parted ways." Opening his eyes again, Zuko glanced upward at the ceiling, his voice low and quiet. "I traveled alone for a while. During that time, I stayed a night in an Earth Kingdom town that had been emptied of most of the young men and women so they could fight in the war; those that remained were either too young or too old, and the only law was enforced by a greedy, cowardly group of bullies that needed to be set straight."

"Hah. You, showing mercy on an Earth Kingdom town? Doesn't seem like your style."

"Hey, you asked, didn't you?" Zuko frowned. "I can stop, or I can keep going."

"No, no, I'm sorry." Mai waved a dismissive hand, humor dry as fire kindling. "I'll hear you out a little longer."

Zuko grinned. "There was a little boy there, whose older brother was a soldier. I like to think we bonded, but...well, I had to Firebend to stop the ringleader of those bullies I mentioned earlier, and he didn't take too kindly to that."

"Ungrateful snot."

"Maybe. Spending the night with them...living on the road, alone _or_ with Uncle, I think I learned a few things about the people of the Earth Kingdom." Zuko's voice picked up - a lighter tone, one that Mai associated with Zuko hitting a revelation of some sort. "Even if that boy never forgives me, at least I know I did the right thing."

Mai laid a hand on Zuko's shoulderpad, finally making him turn his head towards her. Now she could see the scar - red and pink and shaped like a wave of superheated flame, surrounding his left eye and reaching back past his ear (atrophied and wrinkled) and partway up his scalp. His scar didn't scare her, it didn't make her queasy or curl her toes; if anything, it was a mark of progress, a footnote speaking of the person he had become, of the person he would be. If anything - Mai felt unease welling up inside her for thinking such, such _corny_ thoughts - the scar was more attractive because of the tribulations that Zuko had endured following it. He wasn't ugly for having it.

It was actually kind of..._sexy_.

She realized, fleetingly, that her heartbeat had jumped into her throat, that it felt so strong as if her veins would burst out of her skin. This sensation of almost overflowing was familiar, it was - it was passion, it was a moment, oh Spirits, they were having a _moment_ and her parents would walk into the room any second now and they would be mortified to find their daughter sucking face with the Fire Prince but it would serve them right and Mai would show them just how daring she could get -

Zuko's lips were always hot when they brushed against hers - he was a Firebender after all, and not just any Firebender but the son of the Fire Lord - and this time was no different as the boredom slipped away from her like clothing from porcelain skin behind the changing screen.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Pressing further into Omashu only became more complex the longer they stayed in the city, and Longshot was beginning to feel cornered. He hated the sensation; in any given circumstance, he could at least pull out his bow and let fly an arrow or two (this, of course, being metaphorically or literally), but the Fire Nation troops patrolling the streets moved quickly and with purposeful intent. Something had set them on edge.

"We really should have staked this place out, I think," Smellerbee whispered.

Her voice came from inside an empty barrel to Longshot's right, reverberating off the inside; he glanced over to it, and saw one of her large, mascara-lined eyes peering out from the hole in the side, blinking occasionally in the depths of shade. She spoke so lightly that it was almost - _almost_ - hard to hear her. Pressing his back even further into the stone wall of the building they hid against, drawing his knees a little tighter to his chest, the archer fixed Smellerbee with an inquisitive look.

"You know what I mean," replied the barrel, her tone more self-deprecating than biting. "Jet always had us staking out places we planned to hit. This one shouldn'ta been any different; we should have waited a day or two and gotten their patterns down before entering the city. Now the soldiers are on alert and it's most likely our fault - _my_ fault - for jumping in so recklessly."

Longshot shrugged at her. Yeah, in hindsight, it made a lot of sense, but the archer hadn't thought of observing their enemy's habits either. Pipsqueak and The Duke had been first and foremost on both of their minds, and after spending the last few weeks questing to Omashu in search of their allies, the leap to action could at least be justified. They shared equal blame in the lack of forethought, and the only thing to do now was to push forward, Freedom Fighter style.

The corner of Smellerbee's eye wrinkled, and Longshot could tell a grin had split her face. "You're right, of course. You always are."

He shrugged again: not _always_, but often enough where it counted. His lips curled into a mock-boasting smirk that would have done Sneers proud.

"Hey! You there!"

The voice rang out loud through the alley, and both Freedom Fighters were up and moving before Longshot even had the chance to realize it, the wind at their faces, the impact from each step jarring up his legs. Smellerbee clutched the barrel's lid tightly in her hands, pressing it down against her skull, flattening the giant ball of fuzz that was her hair. The soldiers didn't wait for the Freedom Fighters, though, fire licked at their heels, and Longshot unslung his bow from his torso, reaching over for three arrows - he _thought_ he'd heard three people anyway -

Clattering footsteps charged after them, the soldiers yelling for back-up as they ran, and - yeah, that would bring down more of them, and there went the element of surprise the Freedom Fighters had been clinging on to. Longshot skipped off the cobblestone alleyway, planting his feet on the side of the nearest house; he vaulted off, out into the main street ahead of Smellerbee, nocking the arrows he'd drawn. He could see the soldiers that pursued them - mostly in their thirties, two with impressive amounts of facial hair and one with a nose ring - and felt a small twitch of smugness overcome him, because there _had_ been three of them. He aimed, adjusted the arrows as he flipped through the air, and released, each one finding its mark and sending the soldiers sprawling.

He landed, splaying one leg out to keep from stumbling. Smellerbee charged past him, her slipstream sending a cold breeze past his face; she whooped, and he felt her energy flowing as if it were a contagion, spilling out, sloshing the ground and those about her (himself included). He reached over his shoulder for another arrow and charged after his leader-and-friend-and-more's receding back.

They had no direction – no idea of knowing where any of Omashu's dungeons were. But before, they'd also been operating with much more discretion, and no opportunity to capture/question a guard presented itself, due to the misfortune of the foot soldiers traveling in groups of threes or fours. It wouldn't be an issue now that the hackles had been raised, and Longshot fought the urge to grin as he heard a distant horn yowl up, out, blanketing the city. It'd be a lot easier to secure an 'informant' now.

Ahead of them, two groups of soldiers converged and started to fling fireballs their way; Smellerbee leapt into the air, twisted, and threw the barrel lid with enough force that it impacted in one soldier's stomach and sent him bowling backwards into another. She landed, flames exploding all around her, and rolled out of the way to avoid another incoming volley.

Longshot nocked another arrow as he ran, taking careful aim; at least two of the remaining soldiers had their attention on him, and while one reached for a mace slung across his back, the other had his fists clenched in front of him, feet planted apart. He prepared himself to attack with more natural weapons, and the archer could only oblige him.

Now, he had only successfully done this trick twice in the past, and for a variety of different reasons. The circumstances had to be very particular: he needed clean line of sight on his target, who, conversely, needed to be aiming directly at him. It was risky, but Bee had the remaining troops in hand, and Longshot_ really_ wanted to bump that number up to three. Besides, even though they needed to capture and lightning-interrogate one a soldier, this group was too big to pluck one from.

The soldier (his form clumsy, stiff, despite his age – not very good at the whole bending thing, Longshot supposed) slammed a fist hard into the air, a ball of fire erupting from his knuckles, scorching the air as it caterwauled towards the mute archer. He released his hold on the arrow and dove out of the fireball's path in quick succession, the ground slamming into his ribs and knees and threatening to knock the breath clean from him, but he craned his neck back before landing - saw the arrow pierce the heart of fireball, which blistered past Longshot's head, searing his back. The arrow itself – now enveloped by the blaze onset by the soldier – soared through the air and lodged itself in a chink in the man's greaves. The soldier's mouth became a big, dark red circle as he howled in pain, throwing himself backwards, accidentally bowling over his friend with the mace.

Longshot smirked. The mark had been raised to three. Clambering to his feet, the stone rough on his bare fingertips, he reached over his shoulder for another arrow, charging down the street once again now that Bee had dispatched the remaining soldiers in the group.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Zuko, if for nothing else other than the fact that he was too prideful to concede to his flaws so easily, would have a hard time admitting that he was terrible with the romantic side of a relationship. Well, the wordy part of it, anyway. Mai, though - Mai was easy to talk to, and the prince of the Fire Nation couldn't have been happier with having her as his girlfriend. She was gloomy, and she didn't express herself much, yeah, but that meant small talk stayed at a minimum, and flirting came easier than a greased eel roach slipping beneath the cracks in your doors. Their shared, overall negative view on things was a blessing more than a curse.

Besides, pessimism sans misery had a certain appeal to it, and a girl who was willing to make out with you despite the potential noble faux-paz ready to drop down in their laps was unique. Zuko _liked_ unique.

His breath came out hot from his nostrils, as he and Mai kept their lips locked, their tongues searching, probing each other - he could keep going like this for a long, long time, and he wouldn't mind it, either. But there were always limits, and - through the thick haze of love and dizziness racking his mind - Zuko heard an alarm horn being sounded, followed by a klaxon.

Ugh. Bad news followed him wherever it went, didn't it?

Zuko pulled away from Mai, her taste still lingering on her lips, taboo and mysterious like a black-petaled lotus, and equally as gothic. Her eyes hung half-open, but if she felt any sort of affrontation from the break, it remained well masked behind her usual expression of indifference.

"Sounds like there's some trouble," Zuko murmured, short of breath and yearning for more. He'd be lying if he said that it was easy to quelch that desire. "I thought all the natives left had escaped?"

"They did," Mai said, casting a wistless glance at the table set before them. "There's nobody here anymore except people of the Fire Nation. All of Omashu's original citizens either fled, or got killed when we took the place. Except for their lunatic king, we keep him locked in an iron coffin near the statue of your father."

Zuko frowned. "Then I wonder why they raised the alarm..." He stood up and wandered over to the open-air balcony attached to the room and overlooking the partially converted city of New Ozai, formerly Omashu. Seeing the place in such ruins...seeing the nigh-plaguelike invasion of industrial warehouses and workshops overrunning the city, Zuko felt...guilt? It couldn't have been, New Ozai had been captured while he and Uncle were lost at sea following the failed siege of the Northern Water Tribe. He'd had nothing to _do_ with Omashu's fall. He tried to put this sensation out as well, but it was almost as difficult to shut away as wanting to have more intimate time with Mai. He could only imagine what sort of inside-outward, philosophic jargon Iroh would say - something about how it isn't the Fire Nation's place to destroy entire civilizations and cultures like this, how one beauty (the Fire Nation's) should not be imposed over another's (the Earth Kingdom's) for the sake of this war. And Zuko would scoff, tell him to stop acting foolish, or admonish him for wasting time on silly proverbs when they needed to keep moving, or, or...

Or something else cruel like that_._ Zuko clenched his eyes shut to try and drown out the black thoughts - failed, of course, but let it never be said he didn't give it his best shot. Uncle had done nothing but watch over Zuko - had been a better father figure than his own, natural one. All Zuko had done in return was throw that care back at Uncle Iroh's face.

The Fire Prince leaned forward on the balcony, his palms, his fingertips digging into the rough, carved granite. Mai must have - must have seen him, he guessed - or maybe she was just worried on her own volition - because he caught sight of her standing to his left, out of the blurred peripheral vision in his scarred eye. Wordlessly, she wrapped her hands around his arm, intertwining her limbs amongst his, and leaned into him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder guard. He felt her onyx hair brush his cheek and sighed, feeling his worry, his angst, slipping away.

He'd done the right thing. He'd protected his country by betraying Uncle in Ba Sing Se, by helping Azula conquer it. Soon the entire world would know the Fire Nation's greatness, firsthand.

Behind the pair, from the opposite side of the room they had just left, the door swung open with enough force to clatter into the stone wall framing it; shaken from his reverie, from Mai's silent comfort zone, the Fire Prince and his girlfriend turned to see not Mai's parents, but a soldier of high rank serving as their body guard, framed in the doorway, his chest heaving.

"Prince Zuko! Lady Mai! Thank the Spirits you're safe!"

"Uh, yeah, we're safe." Mai spoke so dryly that Zuko could hear the disdainful frown on her face without having to actually look at her, and he resisted the urge to smirk in turn. "We're not exactly helpless, you know. Whatever's going on down there won't hurt us."

"So, you're aware of the situation?" The soldier asked, his voice probing with a pinch of fright mingled in; Zuko narrowed his eyes at the soldier, examining him, sizing the man up. He stood at average height, a little on the tubby side - certainly not large enough to make Uncle, in his, uh, girth, blush with envy, but the man definitely kept himself well-fed.

"All we know is the klaxons are going off, nobody came in here to _tell_ us anything," Zuko replied. "Are you going to enlighten us, or are you just going to _stand_ there all morning?"

The soldier flinched, his flame-emblazoned helmet stuck snugly to his head. Regaining his posture with hesitation that would make even the least militant of officers feel like cracking a whip over the man's head, he stumbled over the continued delivery of his message. "I, uh, that is to say - um - a pair of Earth Kingdom bandits have broken into the city, matching the description of wanted posters issued by an eastern-bound branch of the military in an occupied Earth Kingdom town. We're unsure of their motives, but the pair have already harmed and killed a handful of our troops in their invasion."

"Hmph," Mai snorted, crossing her arms over her chest and sticking her lower lip out in disgust. "Looks like there's something for us to do after all, Zuko."

"Yeah," he murmured, casting a glance at the carpet beneath his sharp, pointy-toed, maroon boots. Half to himself, he added, "Two is too few to mount a proper invasion. I think they were trying to slip in and out unnoticed..."

"Precisely what the Lord and Lady had thought, once we were made aware," the soldier said, quick to jump into the Fire Prince's musings, referring to Mai's mother and father. "Fear of an assassination attempt has forced them to postpone your meeting, regrettably. They have summoned me to fetch your highness and your ladyship so that you may join them and the young lord Tom-Tom in the sanctuary beneath the capital building."

Zuko snorted on instinct, and for the first time, Mai's attention fell on the soldier himself. "That's fine for them, but they're too paranoid. I can stand up for myself."

"She can, too," Zuko pointed out, smirking.

"But, Prince Zuko - "

Turning on the ball of his foot, Zuko marched over to the balcony one last time, Mai at his side. The pair exchanged a quick glance, and Zuko found himself basking in the presence of a very, _very_ rare treat; Mai, fixing him with a faint smile that almost pierced the barricade of cold gloom she called refuge.

It was close enough to a loving smile that she could muster, and Zuko was fine with it.

The soldier protested, vocally and incoherently, but even though he was in the room behind them, they were already beyond his range of effect. Zuko vaulted, kicking his feet up, over the banister's railing, the wind tearing at his robes, his armor pulling him towards the ground at a wicked pace, his face going dry from the friction. The side of the building rushed up beside him, the conical shape bulging out; Zuko caught the passing stone with one hand, kicking at it and digging the pointed toe of his boot into the porous rock, the metal leaving a darkened streak in his wake, shooting up a spray of sparks. Control your momentum, Zuko - capitalize on it, use it to your advantage, and beside him he saw a blur of flowing maroon and black as Mai charged down the rock, her arms spread back behind him.

It wasn't that long to the ground, really. Why take the stairs when this was more exhilarating?

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Smellerbee pushed the soldier up against the adobe kiln, the impact strong enough to jar up through her elbow; pulling her dagger free of its sheath at the small of her back, she pressed the blade against the tender flesh of the Firebender's neck.

The troop's breath came out low and quick - hyperventilating. Or scared, maybe. Tired? Who knew, who cared? There was something weird about this one, though, because - Smellerbee and Longshot ran into her while she was alone, and she _had_ put up a little bit of a fight, but it still felt like she'd thrown in the towel - given herself to the Freedom Fighters. Smellerbee didn't like it. It left her feeling uneasy, and something about their prisoner's eyes - cold and amber and...

Around the Freedom Fighters and their captive, the house - because it _was_ a house, one of the few left standing after the Fire Nation's renovation of Omashu - remained bathed in an umbra as thick and cloudy as canary squid ink. The kiln, made of a sturdy, dried, pressed clay, was fat and wide, hunkering in one corner of the combined kitchen and dining room; inside the kiln's cavernous firepit, the Freedom Fighter could made out the remains of either a half-cooked meal long since abandoned, or some bit of artisan craft - difficult to tell, because who knew how long this place had been abandoned? (She was a realist above all else, though, so she was inclined to think it was the former of the two ideas.)

A table squatted close to the ground behind her, wide, broad - a slab of rock decorated with shining, multicolored stones that had been exquisitely polished at some point, but dust had long since settled in place, obscuring the luster. On several nearby counters idled clay-sculpting tools and decorative plates, also turned foggy with neglect, and the only source of light came from a window, casting a silver rectangle across the floor and table. Perhaps most disturbing, though, was the half-drained bowl of soup abandoned haphazardly on the side of the table closest to the kiln; as if everything else hadn't spoken enough volumes, a thin film of skin that had formed over the soup's surface, and the greasy, stained ends of the chopsticks abandoned beside it, yowled a testament to how long ago this place had been abandoned, a spooky reminder to how suddenly the lives of these people had been uprooted by the war. (It also furthered Smellerbee's opinion that the lump of something in the kiln had been edible at some point.)

Longshot remained close by, his bow drawn taut, an arrow nocked. He kept his aim at the window, in case anybody peered in, saw them, but the pair had been running for close to an hour since their initial discovery and had found themselves on the opposite side of the grand hill that comprised Omashu's central spire. After capturing this person who wore the armor of a soldier but had a much more dangerous air about her, they'd hauled to the nearest, safest place they could - here - and had set up this little meeting. Smellerbee's feet and ankles were sore from all the running, but her throat had long since stopped being tight and tingly and raw.

"Here's the deal," Smellerbee hissed, her voice so low that it fit much better the description she had given Jet shortly after their first meeting - that of a spider-snake choking on a baby rattle. From underneath the maroon-rimmed, flame-patterned helmet, the soldier - whose rounder chin and gentler, lashed eyes, slighter frame and the subtle swelling in her chest plate contributed to the proof that she was, indeed, female - raised her eyebrows, as if unsure of where, exactly, Smellerbee intended on going. She was playing dumb.

Longshot flicked his head in their direction, only for a split second, and even in her peripheral vision the meaning was clearer than crystal - be careful. This bender seemed slick, and Smellerbee had a hard time dispelling the sensation of a masked aura of cleverity about her.

"You give us the information we need, _quietly_." The Freedom Fighter hunched down a bit, bringing the blade's edge up - not enough so that it bit into the skin, but just right so that the soldier would feel its cold edge ready to sever flesh and spill blood. "You cooperate, and you'll get to see the sun rise another day. Give us trouble, and...well, I get shaky when people don't cooperate. I wouldn't want there to be any unfortunate accidents."

"Fair enough," the soldier consented, her hazel eyes sharpening as they met Smellerbee's gaze. In the young Freedom Fighters' experience, women rarely found themselves serving as low-ranked members of the military, so finding this one had taken her off guard, at first – especially given how, well, _young _this girl was. Probably no older than sixteen. She knew that there existed several elite troops – somewhere out there, with only Jet's experiences to serve as proof – among which females made up the majority, and given how the most ruthless person in the Fire Nation's military ranks short of the Fire Lord himself was his own daughter…

"Okay, I'm glad we've come to an understanding." Smellerbee tilted her head and scowled. "First things first: what happened to this city?"

"Hmph. " The soldier rolled her eyes. "It's not clear enough?"

"I'm the one holding the knife, and I don't think it's as simple as you're making it out to be."

"Almost." _Clank, clank, clank_ – every time she shifted her weight, her armor rattled, and she'd been doing it a _lot_ since coming here. The noise unsettled Smellerbee, and she applied just a hair's more pressure on the knife. The soldier flinched and relented with, "Ack, okay, okay! When the Fire Nation came to invade Omashu, we were ready for a long stake-out. We'd heard that the king here was eccentric and a notorious war veteran – over a hundred years old – and we were going to approach the invasion with as much caution as possible, but the old geezer was _too _eccentric. Before we could even start the invasion properly, he surrendered. I don't know what happened to the civilians, they must have been evacuated somehow, but the only entrance to the city is that one bridge." Her voice sped up, as if panicking that her lack of knowledge might land her in hot water. It _seemed_ genuine, but Smellerbee had been wronged enough times by these people to know better than to let her guard down. "The general opinion of the Fire Nation army is that they were escorted to safety by Earthbenders in the opposite direction, where none of our forces had been located."

"What about the warriors?" Smellerbee demanded, eyes narrowing. "Omashu had an army. Where are they?"

"They – they stayed behind." Her lips curled into a frown, and she glanced to the side. "They formed a group of freedom fighters that attempted to fell the new power here, but eventually the Avatar and his friends helped them escape, too – without spilling a drop of blood, I might add. Quite impressive, don't you think?"

Smellerbee - and yes, she'd noticed the soldier's choice of words, but chose not to comment (it had just been a coincidence after all) didn't like the cold turn their captive's voice had taken, and felt bogged down with the sensation that their time together was quickly drawing to an end. Only time enough for one more question – the important one. "Where are the city's dungeons? Is there anyone else left in them?"

"No. Whichever humanitarian had saved the civilians also deigned to save the city's criminals." The soldier put on a wicked grin, her eyes becoming like a snake's fangs ready to plunge into Smellerbee's arm, were she not careful - and if she drew back too soon, the venom would be twice as potent. The tension between herself and the soldier grew thick – like the skin on that soup – and Smellerbee narrowed her eyes, the fingers on her free hand flexing slowly near her hip, where Jet's sword still hung. "We could never successfully capture any member of the resistance, so the only people there now are criminals to the Fire Nation…and they never stay there for very _long_ – "

_NOW!_

Smellerbee withdrew her arm, not bothering to slice with the dagger, as the soldier pushed back against the kiln and kicked up with her feet; a crescent of blue fire (_blue_ fire!) arced out, slicing through the room and highlighting it with sapphire, flickering light. The flames came so close that she could feel its blistering rage against her stomach, chest, and thighs.

A strong hand wrapped itself around her arm – Smellerbee caught sight of Longshot's gauntlet out of the corner of her eye – and before she knew it she scrabbled for purchase along the ground, dodging out of the building, more lashes and blasts of cobalt fire chasing them out.

"That's no ordinary soldier!" Smellerbee yelled, sliding her dagger away as they ran. Behind them, the sound of exploding stone roared up behind them, like a strong wave in the middle of high tide, spraying them with scorching heat and pebbles instead of cold, salty water. She chanced a look over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of their former hostage leaping free from the ruined side of the house, tossing away her helmet and landing with her feet planted apart, skidding across the ground.

Although not the clearest view, she could see the blue fire forming before it took the form of a solid attack; Smellerbee dove, dragging Longshot down with her, her elbows and knees impacting hard enough to cause wet, sticky, throbbing sensations at the joints. Another wave of blue fire passed directly overhead, dry and hot as a desert wind, and the smell of singed hair wafted into Smellerbee's nostrils.

Longshot groaned beside her, and from her peripheral vision, she saw him wincing and clutching his solarplexus with one hand. He didn't draw the deep, larynx-scraping breaths of a man whose wind had left him, but Smellerbee could tell the same had happened anyway, and that his silent nature just happened to carry over.

She helped him to his feet before their assailant could dole out another attack and began running, her lungs, her skin, her hair burning – oh, Spirits, she wouldn't be able to keep running like this, she could feel herself trembling, ready to give out, they'd already overexerted themselves! It was like fighting the Dai Li all over again, only this time it was multiple events and a single person conspiring to exhaust the two Freedom Fighters.

They needed – they needed to hide, for now. There was no way they'd escape Omashu altogether, not right away, and this demon woman would likely kill them instead of capturing them. And Smellerbee had to admit, slogging up the tricky slopes to Omashu's center, something about the Firebender was eerily…_familiar_, and unsettling enough to continually throw her focus.

Every breath Smellerbee drew burned. Longshot wasn't that much larger than she, but his weight was enough to slow her down substantially – to tax her of her full running speed – but she refused to even _think_ of abandoning him, because she'd promised she never would, not after Lake Laogai. She made as sharp a turn as their combined, stumbling feet would allow, disappearing between a pair of forlorn industrialized smithy buildings. Another fatal wave of fire rushed past where they had been standing moments before, the intensity so high that it splashed the entire alley with its castoff azure.

Smellerbee had spent most of her life fighting Firebenders in one way or another, and as rare as low-ranked female soldiers came, Firebenders with _blue freakin' fire_ was a new one on her. The combination of the two must have been enough to make that woman as dangerous as she was.

The swordswoman led Longshot down another alley, going downhill this time – back in the general direction of the soldier – before taking another left turn. It wasn't a maze of buildings like Ba Sing Se, but the houses and buildings and shops here were more numerous than that city where the buildings had been carved to look like water. Losing the trail of the Firebender should have been easy enough –

- and then, panic clawed at Smellerbee's heart and stomach as there was no _ground_ beneath them, and for a split second they were freefalling, as if the stone had simply chosen to pitch them off the spire. She felt a scream welling up in her throat, too tired to keep it in, ready to overflow, they were so high up and Longshot couldn't save himself and she didn't have the strength or sense of mind to reach for Jet's sword and dig it into the rock again, and she wouldn't be strong enough to keep herself anchored and him on her shoulder, and and and the ground was so far _away_ as time turned to molasses –

The stone basin rushed underneath them so fast that Smellerbee didn't properly have time to register it – and then, impact, she didn't _scream_ but she felt her shoulder popping and felt the stone scraping the side of her face, and they fell no more.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Omashu had been well-known (even amongst the Freedom Fighters) for its unique cultural architecture. While the entire city rose up from the center of a canyon, looking like a series of spires clawing at the sky at all times, what couldn't be seen from a distance was the city's fascinating mail and product delivery system.

Longshot had done extensive research on it once, with Mortar and Pestle - architecture wasn't really his bag of cheese, but he'd be lying if he said the stone trolleys hadn't intrigued him. Several hours of downtime had been spent studying the construction and use of the thing, and he found the Spirit of Irony riding beside himself and Smellerbee as they found an impromptu escape plan utilizing this very system.

Conceptualized several centuries ago by Omashu's then-King Zhu, the delivery system utilized wide, stone basins that had enough space in them to hold bulk loads of mail for personal delivery, large quantities of food or raw materials for the workers, or – conveniently – two people trying to escape a Firebender more than ready to and fully capable of killing them.

The basins traveled along wide rails, also made of stone, the weight and aerodynamics of the basins allowing them to slide down at an incredible speed. Earthbenders would stop and redirect the basins as needed, sending them to the proper districts and ensuring that the entire process ran smoothly.

(Some say that the most recent king, King Bumi, had often used these as slides as a youth. The sort of eccentricity matched the profile of the king the Firebender had described to the Freedom Fighters, and Longshot could draw from that two conclusions: either King Bumi was still alive, or had only recently been killed. A grim prospect, indeed.)

Without civilians left in Omashu, mail delivery had clearly come to a halt, and without Earthbenders to properly operate the system, Longshot wondered both how and why the trolleys moved in the first place. Maybe the Fire Nation actually found it useful and, rather than destroying this cultural gem, they just mutilated it for their own purposes. Landing in the stone basin as it slid along the tracks leading downward, towards what Longshot figured was, at one point, Omashu's business district, had been a fluke and nothing more...though he wouldn't be surprised if the Spirits had had a hand in it somehow.

Even though his breath still came in hot, stabbing daggers, even though landing had _hurt_, his concern instead turned to Smellerbee, laid in a heap beside him, clutching her right shoulder and biting down on her lower lip. Her face was pinched, she'd really gotten hurt from the fall, and as the wind whipped at them, he could see tears streaming down her cheeks. He couldn't tell if she'd dislocated or broken something, but he hoped that – whatever it was – it wasn't the latter. Escape would be impossible if it were, and already things were looking pretty bad for their sorry-ass hides.

He glanced back upward, but did not see the Firebender following them as the section of the city they'd just fallen from grew more and more distant. Only the sound of the blustering wind and the basin grinding against the stone rail accompanied them in the trip. He let out a sigh, felt tension start to unknot himself in his chest -

"Well, hi there!"

Longshot whirled around, craning his neck back and squinting against the sun; another girl (not the Firebender, but wearing pink and rose-colored clothes befitting of a member of the Fire Nation), with a rounder and decidably more affable face. With sparkling eyes, she grinned and kept her hands on her hips, her feet planted wide on the brim of the basin. Her hair - the color of tree bark - hung loose off her scalp, but had been tied back into an impressive braid that hung down past her waist, whipping around, beyond her, threatening to take a nip out of Longshot's nose. Her clothes were - unusual, a puffy set of pantaloons in tandem with a roomy shirt that boasted a large collar that settled down around her neck rather than rising up behind it. Both articles conspired to reveal an exposed navel and a pinched waist, and even the spare room in her shirt failed to hide the swell of her breasts.

When Longshot said nothing, the girl tilted her head to the side, her smile melting into a curious frown. "What, are you giving me the silent treatment? That's kinda mean. I mean, Azula was right, you're the two people on those wanted posters and I have to chase you down, but that doesn't mean we can't be friendly. I'm Ty Lee - what's your name?"

Well.

Let it never be said he wasn't a gentlemen. He extended two fingers on one hand and tapped his throat, just over his adams' apple, hiking one eyebrow.

Ty Lee's expression brightened again. "Oh! You can't talk? That's okay. I was looking forward to having a conversation, but we'll manage I'm sure - "

If Ty Lee intended to attack first (had she mentioned the name 'Azula?' Surely, not the daughter of the Fire Lord - if that were true, then he and Bee were boned so much harder than before), she hid the signs very well - and this ride on the mail delivery system wouldn't last forever. The Freedom Fighter didn't spot any weapons on her, but she balanced with almost acrobatic grace on the careening trolley, and she'd pretty much admitted to being Fire Nation, and...oh, _balls_.

He felt the fingers on his fists curling tight, but his bow wouldn't be effective at this range - he could use it as a bludgeoning weapon if really necessary, but it wasn't meant for that sort of thing and risked breaking, and if his bow broke, then he'd truly be useless to Smellerbee. Drawing a deep breath (throat still tingling), he prepared to do something he'd never done before.

He'd always been terrible at close-combat fighting.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Chapter 2: Kick, punch, it's all in the mind**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Longshot had never once in his life resorted to something so, so savage, so barbaric, as throwing a punch.

Like speaking, it seemed..._unnecessary_, just another way of resorting to the lowest common denominator to communicate. Much like how in conversation he preferred to let his body language and scant facial expressions talk for him, in combat he defaulted to the bow and arrow because it A/ not only deferred to his natural talents, but also B/ required a lot more skill and grace.

Not like he had a problem with people who _fought_ unarmed or at least brutishly close to it. Pipsqueak was one hell of a guy and his weapon of choice was a log, and Sneers was a master of unarmed martial arts that certainly served his uses despite his questionable attitude. No, that'd be akin to having a problem with people who exclusively relied on verbal communication to get their point across. That was a whole world of innocent folks right there, as well as a few jerks and bad guys - so, no, there wasn't an issue with others using their fists to get a point across.

(Of course, if it came to a brawl over something irrationally pathetic, like who got the last of the rice balls Skillet made for the Freedom Fighters, _then_ Longshot conceded to the overall futility of the concept. The fisticuffs between Smellerbee, Sneers and The Duke had been amusing, but the archer always called it up as a prime example whenever he wanted to explain his rationality to somebody else.)

Still...his bow would be worth ostrich horse shit if he tried to use it this close to his enemy, who perched on the edge of a stone basin maybe five feet by eight feet (which was a generous estimate) careening down a broad, stone rail. He would have to justify himself later that this fell into the former category of his concept of punching things, he guessed.

Longshot tore through the air with one clenched fist (because 'tearing' was the only appropriate word, how ungainly the attack had been), missing the Fire Nation girl entirely; she jumped over the archer, flipped, reached one hand down above her head, and grabbed the opposite lip of the basin, maintaining her balance by throwing out her free arm and curling her legs over her head. She met Longshot's gaze, and the amicable nature had fizzled away from her eyes. Further adding to how enigmatic she was, she didn't look angry or affronted at the swing; instead her face had transformed to a wary, determined glare, her mocha-brown eyes plastered on Longshot, studying him, trying to determine his next move.

The basin was meant to carry mail, food products or raw materials; with two people inside of average size (Smellerbee being smaller than Longshot, although not by much) inside, one of whom sprawled haphazardly in one corner and immobile, the amount of free movement allowed was at a minimum. He did _not_ like these odds. The fact that Ty Lee could stay perched so precariously on this runaway trolley unnerved him even more.

He had sight fantastic enough to nail shed manticada shells to trees from several hundred yards away without destroying it, and could read people to an extent (though not like Bee could, she was _incredible_ at that stuff). But this girl remained a mystery, and the longer Longshot waited, the less likely he and Smellerbee would escape Omashu with their heads.

He swung again, once from the left, and then again from the right; Ty Lee cartwheeled around both attacks, and Longshot rocked as she kicked one of her feet out at the same time, connecting with his jaw. He grabbed the edge of the basin for support, to keep him from falling out or landing prone on his butt, and glared up at the girl, who now stood upright again with her arms straight at her sides.

"Look, you can make this really simple for yourself," Ty Lee urged - pleading, almost? The fact that she was acting so compassionate about the whole encounter almost threw Longshot through a loop - it was like she wasn't a member of the Fire Nation at all. Ty Lee glanced away, bit her lower lip - odd, this woman. "You're both really hurt and tired and you could get killed if you're not careful. I don't wanna let that happen, even to my enemies. I don't like killing, and if I fail, Azula's _definitely_ gonna come after you. She..."

_Azula._

Suddenly, the puzzle pieces fell into place - the female Fire Nation soldier he and Smellerbee had captured, thinking they were so clever and proactive - the fact that she had unnerved him, unnerved _both_ of them, before the blue fire. How she had terrified them, sent them into a tight, ice-cold panic as they tried to escape. It was the same fear he'd felt outside Omashu, staring at the statue of Fire Lord Ozai, but the wildness of their trip in the city had completely made him forget about that up until now. Of _course_.

Longshot did not doubt the sincerity of Ty Lee's words. She seemed like a good person despite her origin, despite being on the other side, and that _she_ in particular would strive to not kill them felt true enough. But Azula not killing them if Ty Lee succeeded seemed like, well, a long shot. He doubted that the Fire Princess, infamous for her cruelty and cold-blooded nature, would ultimately wind up sparing their lives. They weren't important enough to keep alive. They'd need to do some Avatar-level stuff to be worth _that_ sort of concentrated effort - a nice slice of irony, given what he and Smellerbee had set out to do.

Longshot unclenched the fingers on his right hand, striking out one last time with the left; this punch flew straight and true, but at this point, he should have known Ty Lee would see through him, again nimbly dodging the move by flipping over Longshot's head - this time, she jabbed him sharply three times, once in the crook of the elbow, once underneath his forearm, and once at the ball of his shoulder. Tingling numbness overcame the limb instantly, and it fell uselessly to his side - each attack from Ty Lee, made using her pointer and index fingers on both hands, had hit _something_, like pressure points or chi lines.

A one-armed archer was useless to the world.

But it hadn't been a total wash - Longshot had at least anticipated her dodge, and while still in the air, he reached up with his right hand and grabbed an arrow from his quiver. She landed on the basin's edge again, just as Longshot whirled and brought the arrow upward; its razor-sharp head bit into her skin, tearing through the fabric of her shirt, making her cry out and wobble. She jabbed Longshot's right arm before she could lose her balance, and his fingers may as well have been wet noodles; the arrow slipped from between them, the tip covered by a scrap of pink cloth stained crimson.

He didn't trust his own balance well enough to try to kick her with two useless arms; he lowered his head and thrust it forward, intending to catch her gut, but the flash of pink and rose from his peripheral vision told him that she'd done another one of those damn cartwheel moves, and another rapid series of jabs in his lower back sent him sprawling face first into the basin. The stone scraped his skin, drawing blood, and he felt Smellerbee's legs pinned beneath his stomach, warm and uncomfortable when jabbed almost against his solarplexus. It was only thanks to the brim of his hat that he didn't hit nose-first and break it, though a quiet, threshy _snapt!_ told him that his poor, precious headgear may not have been as fortunate.

"And that's all I have to say about that," Ty Lee said. Longshot's hat had skewed enough thanks to his fall that he could look at her even in this awkward position; she hopped down from the edge and leaned back against it, a flicker of curiosity working behind her wide, brown eyes. "So you guys are Longshot the Hawkeye and Crimson-Faced Smellerbee, huh? Judging by the face-stripeys on your friend, you're probably the archer. Funny, I imagined you guys being a lot..._meaner _-looking in real life, but the wanted posters were pretty accurate."

Longshot kept an even expression, struggling - trying to get wriggling muscles to work - but his body didn't want to obey him, like the commands that started in his brain turned into water before reaching his limbs. Even willing a pinkie finger to curl up proved impossible.

"Well, since I managed to get you two, I figure once Azula's done with you guys, she'll probably throw you in prison." Ty Lee tilted her head to the side, her lower lip stuck out in a reflective pout. "It's not so bad compared to the alternative, really."

Longshot felt his brow furrowing. Prison wasn't an option! The world needed saving, and without the Avatar to make that happen, it needed all the help it could get. It _needed_ the Freedom Fighters, and yet Azula would probably have deemed them otherwise. Again, the Spirit of Irony loomed overhead with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.

Suddenly, from beneath Ty Lee, Smellerbee lashed out at her; in her hand, Longshot caught sight of her knife, a glinting, serrated tooth in the peaking sun; Ty Lee saw it coming as well, and jumped away just as the Freedom Fighter sank the blade into the stone basin with a shower of sparks. But instead of jumping forward, she had jumped back - jumped _out!_ - and Longshot saw her clambering upright already far behind them. She'd landed on the rail and didn't seem very interested in continuing the pursuit.

"Ahh - crap. Ow." Smellerbee settled back down into a seated position and slipped her knife back into its sheath. Her lips peeled away from her teeth, and she gave a low hiss. "Ow ow ow. Are you okay? Ow."

Longshot nodded, a terribly handicapped motion - but one he could nonetheless perform, unlike, well, any motion between his neck and waist. And it's not like he was paralyzed, he could still _breathe_, and he could feel Smellerbee beneath him. Thank the Spirits for small blessings.

"Good. Ow. Damn shoulder got dislocated." She worked to prop herself up into a sitting position, her legs shifting under Longshot's torso. "Mind getting up? You're heavy enough when I'm not hurt. Fatty."

Longshot snerked and shook his head. He tied flipping himself over, using nothing but his weight, but all he managed to do was wriggle a little bit past Bee's kneecaps. Not entirely the most effective thing he'd ever done.

Smellerbee shook her head and scowled. "That bizarro circus freak did something to you when she poked you," she grunted. "I can't set my shoulder in here - I need a solid wall to press up against, and this tub thing's just too shallow."

Well - it didn't look like they were being followed. Longshot furrowed his brow. At least, from where he laid, it didn't. He couldn't catch a glimpse of Ty Lee's rose-colored, flowing clothes, or of the maroon-and-black armor belonging to the Fire Nation army proper.

"If I flip you over, will that give you a better view?"

It'd be better than staring mostly at the porous, rugged surface of the stone basin that had torn away at the skin on his cheek.

Smellerbee, grunting - biting back the urge to truly cry out (Longshot had dislocated a bone before and he _knew_ how much it hurt, like flames crawling all along the marrow and nestling in the joints) - leaned forward far enough to push Longshot with her good hand. She pulled her knees up at the same time, and the archer flopped over onto his back, his hat jostling so that it covered his eyes - obscuring his vision even moreso. The toes of Smellerbee's boots were pinned under his side still, and she would have been able to pull them out entirely given they had enough room. They didn't, so he guessed it was the thought that mattered more than anything else.

Bee grabbed the brim of his hat between her forefinger and thumb and pulled it free from him, setting it on her knee and sighing. "You're not going to like this, Longshot. That fall put a crack all the way from the brim to the top. You'll need to do some fancy needlework to fix this one."

Ahh well. He rolled his head as if to shrug, a slight grin playing across his narrow jaw. That just meant it was one step closer to displaying all the affection he had for the thing in the first place. After all, a well-loved hat was worth all the gold in Ba Sing Se.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"These are the two we're after, girls."

"Hey!"

"Oh...sorry, Zuzu. Girls and girlymen."

There was a time Mai would have snickered at the slight. Ages ago - before love was something that existed outside of fairy tales, when boys still had cooties and Zuko only had to play with her out of obligation to Azula. At fifteen, though, it no longer amused her as much, but rather than call Azula out over it, she simply crossed her arms over her chest and glanced away, feigning disinterest, pretending that her focus had wandered away out of boredom. Spirits knew the genuine article claimed her often enough that she didn't need much practice.

Beside Mai, Zuko bristled, but chose to keep his mouth shut - Azula's childhood nickname for her older brother never ceased getting under his skin, no matter what side of the war each one stood on. Ty Lee hung from her knees from a vertical steam vent that had fallen into disuse shortly after New Ozai's rechristening, her arms pulled taut behind her back, a questioning frown on her lips. Slightly higher up than the rest of the group, she had her back to what was Omashu's industrial district and as such was poised between Mai and Zuko, and Azula. The latter of the quartet stood upslope, her regal black armor with gold-yellow highlights abandoned for maroon with black highlights - that of a regular soldier's. Her sharp face and magmatic eyes were framed by locks of long, black hair. Usually, she kept the hair up into a tight topknot with her bangs well-kept spikes on either side of her cheekbones, but - according to her story - the common soldier's helmet left no room for a proper topknot and hers needed forgoing if she were to persist after their prey. Still - those eyes. Mai had looked into them frequently enough to know that they could eat you alive.

(The thought of Azula's eyes gaining sentience and eating people might have made her snort if Azula looked like she'd been in the mood to laugh too. Mai could only imagine what of the Fire Princess' cruel, calculating personality would carry over to such a beast, and if Azula would actually stand a chance against it if it decided its host was no longer an asset. _That_ would have been - what did Ty Lee call it? Oh yeah. Comedy gold. Mai would risk reputation and noble standing alike for a good belly-laugh there. It'd be worth it.)

Azula produced from her sleeves a pair of wanted posters, scroll paper bearing the likeness of the two people Azula and Ty Lee had encountered. Both looked like boys - one wore a pointed straw hat and wore blue, standing a little taller than the second. The shorter of the two wore brown and had a mop of shaggy hair, with two crimson stripes of war paint on either cheek.

"_'Longshot the Hawkeye'_ and _'Crimson-Faced Smellerbee?'_" Mai returned her attention to Azula long enough to scrutinize the posters properly, pulling a face. "Who the hell made up their nicknames? And which part of that is their _real_ names?"

"Apparently, the 'Longshot' and 'Smellerbee' parts," Azula said, her voice strict and to-the-point. "That's how others addressed them. Some troops in Shuishi City overheard them."

"Stupid."

"I know, right?" The Fire Princess tossed back her head and her lips twisted into a cocky smirk. "All they've done is cause some minor trouble, but they've proven slippery enough to escape Ty Lee and myself. I think it would be..._interesting_ to pursue them further."

"Are you suggesting that you're actually bored, Azula?" Mai would have smirked, if the reward had been worth the trouble. It wasn't. Years of keeping a passive face let her remain neutral, if not appearing endrolled by meeting her friends.

"Yeah, the last thing we need is another person being as gloomy as Mai," Ty Lee teased. Mai knew from experience that the joke was much friendlier than Azula's had been to Zuko, and that was the only thing keeping her amber-frosted eyes from sliding over to the hanging contortionist-slash-acrobat. Instead, she just sighed, shrugged, and turned to face the direction into which Azula claimed the Earth Kingdom bandits had fled.

From behind the teen, she heard Azula continue her lecture. "The archer - in Ty Lee's own experience - is very poor at hand-to-hand combat, and witness accounts of his skill with the bow and arrow more than make up for that inadequacy. Some say he even rivals our own Yuu-Yan archers in talent, but let's not be _too_ hasty to compliment the enemy. He is either mute, or remains silent by choice, but this doesn't appear to hamper communication between him and his partner."

"They seemed like they were pretty close friends," Ty Lee noted. Mai, facing her general direction, craned her neck back far enough so that she could make eye-contact with the rose-draped girl, but Ty Lee's mocha gaze had fixated itself to the ground - rolled 'up' in curiosity. "I mean, the way they defended each other and all."

Azula, never one to be one-upped, cut Ty Lee off from further speculation. "_Any_way, the other one seems to be the inverse; nobody has seen him relying on long-range attacks, and he carries at least three blades on him at a time - two unique swords with hooked ends and crescent-moon hand guards, as well as a serrated dagger. On top of that, he can apparently improvise weaponry without much quandary, has proven incredibly light on his feet, and knows a variety of close-quarters moves excellent for disarming our troops and stealing their weapons. This would-be archery legend and his swordthief companion are small time...as of yet. Right now, we could _crush_ them if we chose, but you'd have to be blind to not see the potential they have for greatness."

Mai snorted. "Loosen the straps of your world-domination goggles before they cut off the circulation to your brain."

Quite suddenly, the chalky, copper-scented air of New Ozai laid flat, thick over them. It was a nice day despite the gray, woolen blanket of clouds draped over the sky; the breeze had been gentle, warm and coddling, and some scent resembling - life, like new flowers, or fresh air - had been trying to penetrate the cover of corrupted odor. In questioning Azula's sanity and intelligence, it felt like Mai had condemned the atmosphere itself to death, and in its throes of desperation, it clung onto its executors, scrabbling for purchase on their robes. A pathetic, _lame_ way to go out, really.

"I'm sorry...I don't think I quite heard you correctly." Azula chuckled, and Mai felt a mild, burning sickness beginning to rise up in her throat. "Did you just call me stupid?"

"My words were nicer." Even though Azula was at Mai's back and she wouldn't have been able to see, that lifetime of keeping a passive face _did_ have its upsides. Any impulse to frown - to flare her brows - to glare amber fear at Azula went quashed. Those would be the tells that she was actually _afraid_ of the princess, and she couldn't - not now - that'd be _dumb_, that'd just be like throwing herself naked into the ocean during a typhoon. It had been an honest mistake, really - she'd meant to keep the words in, but they just slipped somehow, and now Mai had to find something to use to her advantage, to come out of this without suffering any permanent physical damage.

Digging - trying not to panic - after what felt like an eternity, the right thing to say popped into her head. Or at least, she hoped it was, and she said it without hesitation, because if she was going to die or get tortured or something, she at least didn't want it to be for lack of effort. "Besides, I wasn't saying you were dumb. I'm just saying that you might be more bored than I am if you think two Earth Kingdom bandits are going to actually amount to something. I'm all for hunting them down and putting them through hell, but there's no need to get melodramatic about it."

A pause. Mai closed her eyes - partially from fear, but she kept the serene appearance on her face and hoped that Azula would take the bait, assuming that Mai had only been playing the role of Lesser-Evil Conscience (because assuming the Fire Princess had a conscience to begin with, the little people on her shoulder did not answer to "good" or "bad," but only to "lesser-evil" and "super-incredibly-evil-evil"). The air still clung heavy to them, that wailing prisoner silenced pending a potential stay of execution...until finally, Azula blew out a heavy sigh and said, "Fine. You're right, Mai. I...guess I owe you an apology."

Huh. Now _those_ were as rare as they came. Even moreso that it sounded sincere.

Sounded, of course, being the key word. But Mai was not too prideful to push for better luck, and she accepted the apology, sincere or otherwise, with a simple nod of the head.

That'd been a close one.

She was tired of living in fear of Azula...tired and, and, just _angry_. But Azula wasn't something you could just brush off - she could easily kill Mai if she wanted. And right now, the thought of living longer outshone trying to escape the fear.

Maybe the day would come where that'd change, but not now.

"Alright!" Ty Lee said, filling the awkward silence with a rainbow burst of cheer that made Mai want to passive-vomit. The acrobat had remained silent for the argument (if you could associate such a raucous word with such a passive happening, although the tension had been thick enough to cut with a sword), but Mai knew her well enough that she'd been watching - waiting - to see what would happen. With the danger passed, she resumed strawberries-and-happiness mode and flipped from the pipe she'd been hanging on, landing in a crouch on the ground.

(Mai would like to have assumed that Ty Lee would back her up in the event Azula found one or the other dispensable. Hopefully.)

Straightening up, the circus performer beamed and spread her arms wide. "It looks like we've got a game on our hands, then. I paralyzed the archer from the waist up and the other one looked like he'd dislocated his shoulder; they're hurt and tired. Finding them won't be too hard."

"Hmm, good point," Azula murmured, her mind now fully drawn away from the forgotten argument. Her voice took a low, almost sultry tone, and Mai could hear the gears ticking away in the girl's cruel, twisted head. At long last, she turned to face the group as a whole. "It would almost be too _easy_, then, wouldn't it? The day is young and they're in no condition to escape. I say we give them an hour before we actively start to search for them."

"Sounds good," Mai conceded, nodding and flexing her fingers beneath the wide brim of her sleeves. She could feel the cool metal of one of her throwing knives pressing into the flesh of her arms, and found herself grinning internally. "I really _was_ getting bored here."

Azula and Ty Lee began to march downhill. Mai started to fall in step behind them, but noticed Zuko hadn't moved - in fact, now that she thought about it, he hadn't said anything at all since Azula's insult. The Fire Prince, his hair drawn back into the long, flowing topknot, kept his focus on the ground, eyes golden and intense, the color of a blacksmith forging metal with nothing but hammer and fire. Brow furrowed, his mouth pursed into a light frown, before moving - working over words too quiet for Mai to hear. She inched closer to the Prince, her boyfriend, the extra yang to roll side-by-side with her own (because who needed yin in your life?), and picked up, faintly, the words, "...a girl."

"What're you talking about?" Mai probed, grabbing Zuko around the bicep, squeezing him through his sleeve. "Did you even realize your sister almost went murderous-rampage mode on me?"

"Huh?" Zuko blinked, the focus in him slipping - slipping - gone, melted away. "No, I'm sorry. Something about these two is..."

"Is what?" Ohh, she'd like to hear this. If it was good enough to excuse him missing the last few minutes' of conversation, she might let him off the hook.

"...nothing. A bad dream, is all. From a long time ago." He shook his head and frowned. "Let's go kill some time."

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"Magma pins stippling up and down the bones, needles digging into the joints - nfh - metal scraping the marrow - _Spirits_ - "

Her jaw and teeth throbbed from being clenched so tightly together. Smellerbee drew a deep, hissing breath in through her teeth and blew it out through her nose. This building was different from the houses - the stone comprising the sides was smooth, almost like glass, with the surface of a lake glistening in the morning sun. Pressing her right cheek and temple into the stone, it was cool beneath her skin - the sun had vanished beneath a woolly cover of steel. If her wrists seethed their rashen forecast for rain, she couldn't tell over the searing, scalding heat in her shoulder.

The bone. The bone wouldn't _reset_. Oh Spirits, the bone wasn't going back into the socket.

Longshot sat propped back against the parallel building, his legs and arms splayed out in front of him - although Smellerbee had positioned herself around the corner of her building of choice, she had clear line of sight on him. The archer kept his eyes fixed to Smellerbee, and from here, pressed up against the corner of some stranger's storefront, she could see his concern - he was smart about it, though, he didn't make it like she wasn't capable of handling the whole issue. Good. Instead, he tried to mask his worry by wiggling his fingers - slow, clumsy at first, but as the minutes had passed since their disembarking from the basin, Smellerbee could see a little more dexterity in his motions. Whatever that girl - Ty Lee, Longshot said her name was - had done to him wasn't permanent, although it certainly looked uncomfortable.

"Like...like a just-forged dagger," Smellerbee continued, gingerly pressing her bad shoulder to the same wall her face clung to. "Still white-hot off the anvil, tearing through muscle and scalding flesh."

She didn't know what she hoped to accomplish by describing the sensations aloud. Maybe to distract her from the pain, although that theory was faulty at best. Talking about it just made it all the easier to perceive, and her arm hung useless at her side as multiple, invisible colonies of fire ants scrabbled for purchase beneath her sleeve, nipping the skin of her arm and setting it alight with their venomous mandibles. Her vocabulary wasn't colorful or vast enough to find any better ways to explain it, though, and it was enough having a thumb she could dislocate at will.

She hoped the shoulder wasn't another one. Judging by how much it resisted returning to its proper place, she doubted it would be, and all this thunder-crackling intensity was. Not. Worth. It.

Planting her good hand on the perpendicular wall to the building, she grit her teeth again and squeezed her eyes shut. Muscles tense with anticipation, she prepared herself mentally for the starburst ready to rock her body. Even if it didn't work again, it'd still hurt.

"One. Two. _Three - _"

She thrust, her shoulder smashing hard into the unyielding wall; she heard something foreign, something - unusual - claw into the air nearby, a throaty, cattish yowl, and it masked the loud _POP!_ that would signify she'd done the job correctly. A deep blue color the same pitch as that just before the sky turned black at night yawed just behind her eyes, and she only distantly could think of what that bizarre howl could have been and whether or not her shoulder had been set back into place.

She blinked, and suddenly the cooled stone was not pressed against her cheek, and the steel gray that had been overhead instead sprawled out in front of her; her back and head ached, her brain mired in a thin film of fuzz, and her shoulder throbbed like a chain-linked set of blasting jelly barrels that had been set off and _would not stop exploding_. Her hair felt matted against the back of her scalp, and the consistent support beneath her sang the full story.

She'd blacked out from the pain.

Cursing, she struggled to get back into a sitting position, and by force of habit moved her right arm to support her weight; she only realized it worked when the residual burning sensation roared back to life and made jagged lightning cracks run down her bones and throttle her joints. Hissing, because that's all she _could_ do, she struggled to get herself vertical again, fighting gravity, the looming ebbing of her energy, pending exhaustion and the desire to want to disembowel that damn blue-fire-crazy Fire Nation girl.

She got the strangest feeling that Jet's swords would have loved the taste of that one's blood, in particular.

And at least her shoulder had finally gone back into place.

On her feet, the ground seemed so far away - too far down for her to stare at it comfortably without something to balance against. Smellerbee shuffled over to a wooden crate set up against the nearest store and plopped down onto it, her breath heavy and hard. How long had she been under? She glanced around - confused, at first, because she'd apparently stumbled away from the corner of the building she'd been leaning against before falling - and found Longshot once she'd gotten a better grasp of her bearings. The silent archer had not moved, but the concern on his face had transmuted, and Smellerbee could see the faintest streaks of outright terror lingering in his eyes, washed away by a calm relief on seeing that his friend was okay.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, shaking her head and blinking slowly, trying to clear away the prickly fuzz sticking to her thought process. "I'm good. How're you doing? How long was I out?"

Still not recovered and about ten minutes, respectively. Longshot's brow furrowed. They'd have to escape, and quickly - he doubted the Terror Twins would just give up their search for himself and Smellerbee, and he didn't want to be _too_ easy to find.

The swordswoman nodded, casting a glance in the direction of the halted mail basin. Although it laid out of sight, the combination of their disabilities meant they had only made it so far before their strength gave out. Rather, _her_ strength - Longshot still couldn't stand upright, even though his legs worked fine. Ty Lee must have targeted some of the muscles in his back, or something. Smellerbee still didn't really understand it, but anybody who could disable an opponent by jabbing them a few times was a bona-fide threat.

Not like the other girl hadn't been, of course.

Longshot's head jerked up in shock; Smellerbee, startled, at first thought he was reacting to something hostile, but his gaze was hot and intense and focused on _her_, not anywhere else around them, and something told the swordswoman she would not like hearing what he had to say.

That girl with the blue fire was no ordinary soldier.

Smellerbee resisted the urge to snark at him. "I think I said that when we were runnin' from her, didn't I?"

Yes, but that was beside the point. Meeting Longshot's gaze became harder the more it revealed because of the sudden, flaming passion behind them - it almost frightened her, even though his gaze was not meant to _be_ frightening. But as quiet as Longshot could be, even his silent forms of self-expression retained a reserved atmosphere about them. He got this expressive only a little less frequently than he actually spoke (though he didn't hold back as much when it was just the two of them), and it startled Smellerbee to know that something important was going to hit the fan.

That girl - she's no ordinary soldier because she's _not_ a soldier. Longshot's brow furrowed. She's Princess Azula, the Fire Lord's daughter.

"..." Smellerbee felt her jaw gaping open a few seconds after the archer had delivered that revelation, and had to exert manual effort to snap it shut. The bottom of her stomach felt like it had given way to an abyss - hot and churning with acids and monsters whose fingers ended in long, hooked claws.

Perhaps, the statue of Fire Lord Ozai had been more than just intimidating when viewed from outside the city. In retrospect, especially given this new knowledge, Smellerbee should have taken it as an omen and backed off entirely.

_Azula_. The she-witch that had conquered Ba Sing Se despite the Avatar's greatest efforts. Jet's irrational fears realized post mortem. Between there and here, she and Longshot had heard stories of her cruelty, of how cold-hearted the Fire Princess was, and how loyal, lethal, dedicated she was to the cause of her country.

"Oh, we're so _screwed_, aren't we...?" As if to concur with the statement - and then to berate her for underselling - her stomach growled a fierce protest. They hadn't eaten since this morning, and all that running around had given her a crazy-fierce appetite. "I can't keep going on like this, Longshot. I'm spent."

He nodded and sighed, his nostrils flaring; he could go for a nap, too. They'd been doing almost nothing but running for the last several hours, and his strength - like hers - was stretched to its limits. They wouldn't get the opportunity to stay here for long, either, since those two girls or the Fire Nation's regular troops would find them sooner or later.

Smellerbee exhaled through her nose and shambled over to the fallen archer, kneeling down beside him, her knees popping. She threw Longshot's arm over her shoulder - her _left_ one, keeping his weight off the right, still tender and throbbing - and stood back up. "We need to find somewhere better to hide. Need to sit down and get some food in our bellies because I'm starved."

Well, if the city was indeed abandoned...Longshot's brow furrowed as he struggled to plant one foot in front of the other, his ability to walk not disabled but certainly hampered. If Azula was telling the truth, then the Freedom Fighters could hide out in any store here - particularly eateries or general store-type places, which would have basements. Lurking underneath the floorboards and hiding in plain sight, it would give the pair enough time to eat some of their rations and rest, regaining their strength. And if they were _really_ lucky, enough time would pass where their pursuers would let their guard down, and they'd be able to slip out of Omashu unnoticed.

"That's a good plan," Smellerbee agreed, nodding. After a pause, she bit her lower lip and asked, "Do you think we should officially give up on finding Pipsqueak and The Duke, then...?"

Longshot's brow knitted together and a light frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. As much as he'd love to stay here and make absolutely sure, they were in over their heads with the Fire Princess and Ty Lee hounding them. It didn't feel right to abandon their family, but if they died now, then there wouldn't be any point to what they were trying to accomplish, you know?

...Except, he didn't feel right being the one to make the call. He wasn't the leader. He'd do what Smellerbee ordered him to do, and nothing different from that.

She sighed. "Okay...well. You're right. We're out of our league. I...I don't think Pipsqueak and The Duke here. And if they are, I don't think we're in any condition to save them. We're making escape our top priority."

He nodded, and she could see the bitterness welling up inside him behind those precious, chocolate eyes. Abandoning teammates was never an easy choice to make.

Smellerbee could do nothing but agree.

As the pair began to move - not in any particular direction, just as long as it was _away_ from the stalled mail basin - Longshot pitched a wide, silent yawn so powerful that his ears twitched. Smellerbee caught herself grinning despite all of the bad news crashing down around them; she loved his ears, how they were large enough to hear the impending enemy attack before any of the other Freedom Fighters on watch could properly see it, how they curved out and away from his head and scooped in all the words offered to him. In exchange for those words, he would offer not further words in reciprocation - he always found them empty unless the situation was appropriate - but instead a place of consul, a person who wouldn't judge you for your mistakes. There was a lot to those ears of his, and Smellerbee had a hard time looking away from them because of it, and their beautiful shape. If the size of a person's heart was proportionate to the size of their ears, Longshot was full to bursting with fluff.

He caught her staring and hiked an incredulous eyebrow. Smellerbee snickered and replied, "No, it's nothing. You're just adorable, is all."

Adorable? Was that all? He smirked. It wasn't a big one, but it had charm - Sneers, in all his cockiness, would have stumbled over his own feet in bristling jealousy.

"Okay, no, not just that." Smellerbee waved her right hand through the air, pushing away the instinct to wince with the motion. "'Adorable' is just the starting point, and it doesn't just stay with your ears. I'd say you got a nice blend about you: one part adorable, one part endearing, one part sexy, one part sensitive. It's a winning combo. Any girl should think herself lucky to have you at her side." She felt her cheeks grow hot, tingling with embarrassment - but a bearable kind of embarrassment, because Longshot wouldn't make fun of her for it. "I...I know _I_ do."

His flush, a wonderful blotch of pink set against his porcelain skin, spoke volumes.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"You called off the other soldiers, Zuzu?" Azula cocked her head and fixed him with a cool smirk. "I can't tell if you're a genius, or cracked."

"Maybe both," Zuko murmured, keeping his gaze forward. Meeting Azula's gaze meant falling into her trap, playing her game - he'd spent the better part of her lifetime stumbling like that, but now he knew better than to fall for her bait. "I did it because they have better things to attend to than a pair of exhausted bandits. This is _our_ time to have a little fun."

"So, a genius it is, then," his sister conceded, her tone low and taunting. If disappointed by Zuko's dodge, she hid it well - but then again, she'd always been an excellent liar. The quartet had taken to walking down to the commercial district, and Zuko found himself wondering what, exactly, the next few hours would have in store for him.

"Besides," he said, narrowing his eyes and frowning. "The commercial district is cordoned off. There's no easy escape for them there."

He remembered Smellerbee and Longshot. Not very well, to be honest - they'd been with Jet on the ferry to Ba Sing Se, and between the four of them, they'd managed to secure actual _food_ for other passengers on the cruise - food the captain hoarded to himself, while the others had all been forced to eat slop not fitting for royalty of the Fire Nation. Even in exile, Zuko had eaten less disgusting things.

Longshot had been quiet - that he remembered. Never spoke much...in fact, Zuko couldn't ever remember having heard him speak at all, which is what made the pair's resurgence here more believable, thanks to what Azula's wanted posters had said. And then there was Smellerbee, whom he knew for a _fact_ was female - Uncle had made the mistake of addressing her as otherwise after the food mission, leading to the swordswoman snapping at him and stalking off. Uncle had in earnest attempted to forge small talk with the face-painted warrior; Zuko hadn't understood why at the time. She was just some Earth Kingdom pissant, warrior or not. But Uncle Iroh had his own way about things (they rarely ever made sense to Zuko), and he'd been more than willing to adjust to humility when a new life as a fugitive from his home country came thrust upon them both. He didn't mind making friendly talk with anyone who they encountered along their path.

Smellerbee did not have a curvaceous figure, and her chestplate had obscured any telltale swelling - and, truth be told, she had been a little on the ugly side. Tomboyishness being taken to the degree of full-fledged gender misconception - even on a wanted poster - wasn't that hard to believe. After all, if Longshot was completely mute as the wanted posters suggested, then nobody would know to judge any better - and in a war where some soldiers were unseemly enough to take what they wanted without any regard to whom they stole from, it was perhaps better to be a boy to the mass public. After all - the difference between the ferry ride and now is that, on the ferry, none of them - Zuko and Uncle included - had been warriors. All five had been simple refugees, trying to seek shelter in what was supposed to have been the only safe place left in the Earth Kingdom.

What a crock _that_ had turned out to be.

Zuko had not seen neither Freedom Fighter since the ferry - and, thusly, neither had appeared the night Jet had burst into that tea shop in the lower ring with the intent of exposing Zuko and Uncle as Firebenders. The Fire Prince could only assume the pair had abandoned their leader's quest, but for what reason, he couldn't figure it out; maybe they had taken the temptation of a Second Chance closer to heart than Jet had.

But that didn't make sense. If that were the case, then why would they be here, now, with bounties on their heads? Something, somewhere along the line, must have changed the course of their lives.

If Uncle were here, he'd have spouted off some proverb about fate, and how their paths were meant to cross again. Zuko pushed that notion aside; he'd done too much thinking about Uncle recently, and if he didn't stop, he'd risk dragging himself down into another pitfall of self-inflicted guilt. Mai would have teased him in that blasé manner of hers about how easy he made it to burden himself like that.

So lost in thought, he was only passively aware of conversation taking place around him, above him - just dull buzzing in the background, Mai and Azula and Ty Lee's voices flung back and forth like wasps lofting around in the summer air. It was only when a solid, playful smack to the back of his head that the fog of internal monologue parted, and he was brought back to the streets of New Ozai.

"Zuko's spacing out again," Ty Lee teased, giggling.

"Sorry," Zuko said, placing a hand on the back of his head and shrugging.

"You're being quieter than usual, Zuko," Azula said, her voice full of nothing but faux concern. This time he _did_ let his eyes slide over to her, if only for a moment, but there wasn't a trap for him to fall into this time. "Is there something bothering you about these two children?"

Seeing as how Longshot was somewhere in Zuko's age range, and his sister was two years younger than he, the Fire Prince had no idea where she got off addressing the pair of rebels as children. But that was beside the point, really; if living with Azula had taught him anything, it was that full disclosure on _anything_ usually lead to him being up to his knees in trouble. Confliction, like a riled platypus bear, snarled and raged inside his skull - until he knew exactly what he planned on doing, he would have to keep the full story to himself or lest giving his sister ammunition.

"Nothing," Zuko said, exhaling through his nose, glancing up at the iron-gray sky, the clouds fluffy and bulging, as if the sun itself pressed against the cover in order to break through. The air was dry - there would be no rain, but a whiff of atmosphere could be caught with every inhalation. The rain wouldn't fall today, but a lightning storm seemed impending despite the fact. Lightning without rain was rare but not unheard of, and Zuko wondered if it was somehow significant of their upcoming hunt. "I'm just trying to figure out where they'd go first."

"Hmm, I suppose they _would_ hide to recover their strength..." Azula brought a thoughtful finger up to her jaw and frowned - almost a mimicry of Ty Lee's habit to do the same thing when something intrigued her. "Good thinking, Zuzu. With the archer immobile and the swordsman injured, they won't have gotten far."

Zuko frowned. If he was unsure of what path he was going to take, he'd have to make his mind up soon...


	3. Bonus Chapter 1

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book 5: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Bonus Chapter 1: Golden sunshine, I know somehow it's gonna be mine**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

_Then_

Smellerbee _loved_ autumn.

The boughs of the forest hung overhead, a distant, crimson blanket that let freckles of sunlight shine through. The air bore a brisk chill - not so cold as to be nipping at her cheeks, but the autumnal equinox had passed and the sun set below the horizon earlier and earlier with each passing day. A mild frost was not so bad. It only accentuated the smell, after all.

During the summer, the forest's trees smelled of honey; that was all well and good, she _liked_ the smell of honey even if eating the stuff made her break out in hives (a delightful irony, a smellerbee allergic to honey), but when autumn set in, something beyond the basic sciences of how the forest operated changed. The scent metamorphosised - shifted, swirled, and evolved into the delectable odor of cinnamon. And _that_ was something Smellerbee could eat without itching. It tasted fantastic and smelled even better. And to accompany the cinnamon, a rich backdrop of hickory, and the poignant odor of burning leaves, as they dried and became better material to use for stoking fires.

There were no missions to run right now and she didn't have watch duty. And while she _could_ be up in her tent, tending to her swords...she just didn't wanna. Today was a better day for lying back and absorbing the world around her - this gift nature brought by for only three months out of the year. Lying on the ground with her arms splayed out, she let her gaze wander, tracing invisible paths along the trees. The grass jabbed at her through her clothes, her ragged mop of hair - but that was just part of the experience. She prodded a patch of dirt with her forefinger, her glove removed so she could feel individual grains against her fingertips, little clumps and pebbles sifting up to the top.

She could hear some of the orphans laughing in the distance - she'd opted out of a game of shadow thief to lie down out here, and the children were no doubt having the time of their lives with something so simple. Smellerbee sighed, and half-wished this sort of peace would last forever - never vanish.

"Oh man, Longshot - you _know_ it's autumn when Smellerbee finds trees more interesting than swords."

Smellerbee craned her head back, the world of her view skewing, turning upside-down (although maybe in a world that was already so crooked from war and violence, looking at everything upside-down was really just a way of seeing things straight). Standing just a few feet away were Longshot and Jet, framed with the red and brown from the forest at their backs; the latter thumbed the brim of his pants, his shoulders bunched up and that sideways, roguish grin playing across his sharp face, while the former simply crooked his head to the side and grinned.

"Hey, you guys," she said. "You're off watch duty, Longshot?"

He nodded; just got off, actually.

"He bumped into me when I was going to hunt you down - suggested that you might be here," Jet explained, and the pair moved over to either side of the young tomboy. "Mind if we join you?"

Smellerbee grinned and retorted, "What, am I the Lazy-Ass Monitor? Go ahead."

Jet chuckled and plopped down on the ground, crossing his legs beneath him and leaning forward. Longshot, more graceful, lowered himself gently so that he leaned backwards, propping himself up on his elbows. A cool breeze whistled past, ruffling Smellerbee's hair.

"You know," Smellerbee murmured, "sometimes I look up to the tree branches from here and I can see pictures in them, like clouds. In fact, right there..." she pointed at a knot of branches framed by an abundance of red leaves, tracing an invisible, fat circle around them with her finger. "That looks like a sweat bun, doesn't it? It makes you want to just reach up and pull it free and eat it. Especially now that it smells like cinnamon and not honey." She clenched her fingers - thin and pale and boney - around the distant, nonexistent snack, realizing only when she came away empty-handed that her mouth had started to water.

"Heaven forbid the sky opens and starts to rain honey, then you'd be red as a lychee nut and all swollen up." Jet laughed. He always sounded so sincere when he did it - his laughter was modest, the perfect balance between Smellerbee's belly-laughs, and Longshot's strange, nonverbal bouts of the stuff, where the corners of his eyes wrinkled and you could _tell_ he was laughing without actually doing it. When Smellerbee shook her head and grinned, Jet replied, "No, seriously! I've heard that it happens in the orchards south of here, the ones the Fire Nation hasn't touched yet - they're so pure that sometimes, instead of raining water, honey falls from the sky in tiny little droplets. You'd better be careful if you ever go that way, Bee."

"I'll be sure to bring an umbrella," she responded.

Longshot smiled - he could lend her that one he'd bought a few towns over, if she ever wanted to. It was a beautiful thing the same color of the leaves in the forest - so it'd be almost like taking a part of home with her wherever she went.

Nestling back into the grass, Smellerbee drew a deep breath through her nose, absorbing the cinnamon, the hickory, the burning leaves - and said, "That'd be pretty nice, I think."


	4. Bonus Chapter 2

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book 5: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Bonus Chapter 2: I am the shadow on the moon at night, filling your dreams to the brim with fright**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Nightmares were funny things.

Sometimes, they were vivid - the familiar ones, especially, and Pestle had plenty of those. The most prominent took place in that wheat field, when Mortar had barely been old enough to walk on her own, when Pestle's body hurt and quaked and she was so _hungry_, and her knees and ankles hurt, and the cuts on her back had gone all sticky and tingly. How her clothes clung to her skin, plastered in place with dried blood, green and yellow dulled with a nice coat of ash. How, how even though the world burned down around her, the days were cold and the wind bore an unyielding chill. How there weren't any berries to eat, and anything they found that she _knew_ was edible went to the toddler she had taken with her when fleeing from the sundered ruins of their old life, because it was more important that she eat than Pestle. How her breath came out frosty, how the wind raked its claws through her hair, across her soot-laden cheeks, relentless - and the only warmth they had was a threadbare blanket meant for somebody much smaller than Pestle. Somebody Mortar's size. How Mortar's tiny body was, how precious and fragile she was, how Pestle had to wrap herself around Mortar when night fell, to keep her safe, to keep her from freezing to death. How, finally, the sun would rise and sparing a callous glance at them before continuing its hike towards midday.

How they'd gotten lost in the wheat field, and how, eventually, the thin, beige whips parted and revealed a boy with tanned skin and shaggy, brown hair.

That was a precious memory (although parts of it had chipped away and vanished, lost to time), because for all of those negatives, for all of the tribulations Pestle and Mortar had endured, they came away alive, strong, and had met the person to bring them salvation. But sleep would warp it, and while sometimes they just got weird (her clothes being made of ostrich horse down, or the wheat singing off-key versions of Four Seasons), whenever she had a nightmare about that memory, it was usually a lot scarier. They'd enter the wheat field to avoid being found, they'd get lost, just like in real life...and then, then there wouldn't be any way out, Jet would never come and find them, and, and Mortar - there was only so much Pestle could do, she had been so young, it had been a fluke that they'd both managed to survive for so long in the wilderness, and, and sometimes the nightmares turned soft, harmless things into cruel, cold, scythe-like claws. They would - pry Mortar away, steal her from Pestle's arms, and...

...and that would be when she'd wake up, a sheen of cold sweat running between her shoulderblades, on her forehead, chest tight and pulse hammering.

Then there were the really weird, nonsense nightmares...going to class in her loincloth (harmless) or Skillet's kitchen coming alive and eating anybody within (scary). Sometimes, those would mix with the really clear ones - like, the kitchen, the time it had caught fire, she remembered that _very_ vividly, but then it would grow legs and march through the forest, bellowing the creepiest of nursery rhymes and forcing Bones to pick its nose or something, while Pestle, The Duke and Pickle were all trapped inside its burning confines.

Then there was the fact that some nightmares you just didn't remember - they vanished the instant you crossed the threshold of asleep and awake, and all you knew was that something had scared the pee out of you.

Of Pestle's many insecurities (yes, she was aware she had them), nightmares weren't something she agonized herself over. Sure, that first disoriented half-minute or so, when she had managed to drag the visions with her into the waking realm - she would shake and feel like, like crying, especially with the ones where she lost Mortar...but then she'd find herself, remember which direction was up and which was down, and remind herself that Mortar _hadn't_ died, that Pestle hadn't failed her - had kept her younger sister alive long enough for them to find help, a home, a family willing to take them in. Some of the others would tease her about it occasionally - well, not on the subject of Mortar and failure, but in similar instances - about how Pestle didn't let the "what could have been"s bother her, but the "what if"s drove her into a shell.

They were right, of course.

But something about - about the most recent nightmare...a man's silhouette, with a glowing mouth and a single, circular eye, looming up over the horizon with arms spread, drowning out the sun, turning the sky a purple so deep as to almost be black. Pestle would be running, and Mortar would be behind her - Pestle would have her hand wrapped around her younger sister's arm, clutching her tight, because - because they couldn't, absolutely _couldn't_ separate or else something bad would happen. The air would swell with the dark man's cackle, a reedy, off-kilter sound that jarred the sisters - and the ground would, would erupt, like Earthbending only not, long tendrils of stone sweeping up, breaking Pestle's grip on Mortar - then the tendrils would, would rear up around Mortar, surround her - plunge down, sucking her into the ground - and then - nothing -

She'd had that nightmare repeatedly over the past few nights, and its nature overwhelmed her. Not in the same way that "what if"s did...no, there was an unspoken weight, something more pungent than your average nightmare, and every time Pestle woke up from them, she felt ready to explode with - desperation, frustration, anger. Helplessness.

It was hard to explain, and the more Pestle tried to put it into rational thoughts, the more slippery the overall concept became.

The thing that crept her out the most, though...this nightmare was far more vivid after waking up than any other. Usually, they grew stale after even a few minutes, but this one - it was always clear, every muted sensation still easy to remember, like reaching into the river and plucking out a crawdad. There had to be something about this nightmare...something Pestle should take heed of. Was there some kind of impending disaster? Maybe...maybe if she took some countermeasures...

"...Pestle, you still with us?"

"Wha - " The young Earthbender shook her head and glanced up at the speaker - Skins, the eldest of the Hunter Brothers (Pestle's senior by maybe a year), with a long face and accentuated cheek bones. His thatched hat, with a set of bull horns sewn into it, had been pushed back from his forehead, a sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. He'd discarded his shirt, draped over a low-hanging tree branch at the end of the clearing along with any other bits of clothing the assembled Freedom Fighters discarded for their game of douse the Firebender. Around them, Hong Ye's golden tree trunks soared upward, the canopy of crimson leaves draped overhead, blocking out the sun. That didn't keep the heat from pressing in on all sides - it was one of those summer days where it was just muggy and icky and gross, the kind where your clothes clung to your skin and you sweat all over the place and not even taking a dip in the lake cooled you down for long. (That's why they'd been hanging their clothes up.) A mosquito gnat buzzed at Pestle's ear, and she brushed it away with a dismissive hand - another tell of how deep into summer they were.

"The others already took off to hide, and we gotta get moving if we want to get them all by dinner." From Pestle's left stepped Tinker and Scribbler - twins, both with curly, sand-colored hair, though Tinker's went down to her shoulder blades while Scribbler's stopped at the shoulders. Of the two, Tinker was a mite taller and had sharper features. She and Scribbler were maybe a year or two younger than Pestle, if that. "And you know Bones is going to cheat."

"R-right," Pestle murmured, rubbing the back of her head. "Who's going to go looking for them first again?"

"That's me," Skins said, raising a casual hand in the air. "I'll be taking the north. Good luck, y'all!" The older boy took off, tall and lanky and a mite awkward, his back shimmering under the sunlight. The three girls watched on silently - none of them were allowed to leave the clearing for another minute - and once he had vanished between the trees, Tinker and Scribbler turned their attention to Pestle. The blond Earthbender hunched her shoulders instinctively, because - even though the twins were easy enough to talk to - she still hated being in the spotlight.

"Okay, look, something's bothering you and it couldn't be any more obvious." Tinker planted one hand on her hip and prodded Pestle's forehead with a finger from the other, furrowing her brow. "We might not be Mortar, but we know a thing or two about sibling intuition."

"That's - sort of a big word I don't think I understand," Pestle admitted, bringing a hand up and easing Tinker's away from her. "The Duke teach it to you?"

"Well, yeah. It's not like she knows how to read." Scribbler grinned, earning herself a play punch to the bicep.

"It means...like, to understand." Tinker pursed her lips and glanced down to the forest floor. "Like, we _intuit_ what Longshot says...said. That's how The Duke used it, anyway."

"Ah."

"So, spill the beans!" Scribbler meandered around Pestle, over to one of the trees; she leaned against it and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "We won't blab, we promise."

"Unless it's something absolutely mortifying. Then we make no guarantees." Tinker fixed Pestle with a wicked grin, causing the Earthbender to flinch. Well - if they were going to put it like that, maybe - maybe she shouldn't tell them at all. She must not have done a very good job hiding that sentiment, though, because Tinker giggled and added, "Spirits, I'm only kidding. We're worried."

"It's - it's silly," Pestle murmured. The heat was oppressive enough because of the season, but being the center of attention like this did nothing to keep her cool. And her ears had gotten all itchy. "Just a nightmare. That's all."

"Must be one heck of a nightmare." Tinker hiked an eyebrow. "You've been zonked out all day."

"And most of the past few days," Scribbler added from the tree. "Ever since The Duke and Pipsqueak left the forest again."

Tinker nodded at her twin. "Now no more of this shyness. Come on, Pestle!"

"O - Okay." Pestle drew a deep breath...this would be weird because, because not even Mortar knew about the nightmare. Pestle hadn't been trying to keep it a secret...it's just, she'd never asked, and so Pestle hadn't had a reason to tell. But if Tinker and Scribbler had noticed, then there was no doubt that Mortar had, too...maybe she should tell her once Mortar had been found by herself, the twins, or Skins, when they'd all return to the clearing, or head up to the dinner platform. Still...

She relayed the dream to Tinker and Scribbler - every last detail with as much clarity as she could muster, as awkward as this was. She told them about the dark man, about how cold the world got, how everything vanished to nothing at the end, as if the forest itself were being sucked away...about how the ground would claim Mortar, leaving Pestle alone.

Only when she'd finish did the twins speak; Scribbler, looking unsettled, cast a glance at the ground before meeting Pestle's gaze. "That's...a little on the scary side. I can see why you'd be shook up by it."

"Mmm, yeah." Tinker scratched the back of her head, her mouth pulled into a thoughtful frown, as if - as if trying to puzzle it out. Hiking an eyebrow, she asked, "Have you told Mortar yet?"

"No...I'm not sure how I should." Pestle sighed and slumped back against the same tree Scribbler had laid claim to. "It was weird enough with you guys. How will she react?"

"She probably _won't_ make fun of you." Scribbler shrugged as if to say, 'it doesn't really need to be said, but...'. And she would have been right, it shouldn't need saying, but it had been put out there anyway, and...and that really didn't answer Pestle's original question...

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to figure it out." Tinker cleared her throat and meandered off to the south. "In the meantime, we've kept the others waiting long enough that we can all take off at once - "

Before she could take a step further, however, a sharp, low bird call lofted through the air, making Pestle's ears prick up. What the...?

"_'All Freedom Fighters assemble at the dining platform?'_" Scribbler frowned again, glancing to Tinker. "It's not even near dinner time..."

"It's probably nothing," Tinker murmured, but Pestle could tell that she wasn't half as confident as she sounded - and that more than the call itself unnerved her. Regaling the nightmare had darkened the atmosphere of the place, slipping a deathly chill just beneath the sweltering summer sauna, and the blond Earthbender couldn't shake the sensation that she'd opened some sort of floodgate.

"Well...let's go, I guess..." Pestle lurched away from the tree and headed in the direction of the dining platform, Tinker and Scribbler falling into step behind her.


	5. Bonus Chapter 3

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book 5: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Bonus Chapter 3: I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"This is weird," Tinker surmised.

Yeah, 'weird' was one way to put it. Pestle folded her hands in her lap and hunched her shoulders; something in the air made her hair stand on end, made her clench her teeth together. The call for all Freedom Fighters to convene at the dining hall had sounded out three more times before petering out - the last one Pestle had heard when arriving, and whoever had been summoning them wasn't even near the dining platform - somewhere in the distance. Maybe Sneers just had to prepare first? Still, the air felt heavy and damp - humid, as if a storm was going to roll in and hammer down on them. It wasn't right.

She could tell she wasn't the only one getting that vibe; Tinker and Scribbler had plopped down on the opposite side of the table, the former with her brow furrowed and gaze unfocused, the latter wringing her hands. Further down, she noticed Sheen fidgeting, and Piper gnawed her lower lip, a pensive look on her face. The other Freedom Fighters - most of them were here now - milled about, a dull murmur rolling through the group, pensive, nervous...this pending doom it raked razor-thin claws along her back, making Pestle shudder.

"For the record, I blame you for setting the mood." Scribbler gave a half-hearted smile at Pestle.

The Earthbender shrugged in response, offering a meek, "Uh, sorry," a flush scrawled across her face. It wasn't like she felt bad enough as it was...

"Oh, no, I'm not being mean." Scribbler blushed and rubbed the back of her head. "I'm just nervous. My bad."

"Sup guys?"

Mortar dropped down in the empty spot next to Pestle, startling her; Mortar fixed her older sister with a raised eyebrow. "Spaz. So, anyone have any idea what this is about?"

Tinker shrugged. "I dunno, we were in the middle of playing douse the Firebender when the call went out."

Mortar frowned - if she felt the same gnawing dread that Pestle and the twins felt, she was hiding it really well, and Pestle envied her for it. That, or she was just immune. "What about you, Pest? Sneers would'a said something about it to us unless - "

"It's an emergency," Pestle confirmed. "I was with Scrib and Tink when I first found out. But why...?"

"Eh, I'm sure it's nothing." Mortar pressed against Pestle, smirking. "Or a platypus bear got into our food storage again. Or Skillet found out about us using the good plates for plate catch."

"I'm sure if it were that, we wouldn't be up here." Tinker shuddered. "We'd all be crammed into the classroom. That's her Evil Skillet Mode room...plus, Skillet has trouble functioning at heights."

"Point."

During the exchange, Pestle noticed that Tinker and Scribbler would glance at her occasionally - a flick of the eyes, almost unnoticeable, and the Earthbender knew what they were trying to say without actually saying it. She should - should take advantage of the moment, should talk to Mortar about the nightmares...this was the best time for it, because the foreboding atmosphere didn't promise anything good. Better to get it out of the way, to get it done with. Maybe relaying it to Mortar would make everything better, and it would have turned out to _just_ have been a curious, hungry platypus bear. It was the middle of summer, and there would be plenty of times to restock their winter rations. But bringing it up in front of the twins had been silly enough...what if Mortar just shrugged it off? She was impervious to all sorts of stuff, and superstition and nightmares were on that list. She could just as well brush Pestle off, grin, and say it was nothing to worry about, and how she should stop troubling herself with this sort of thing.

Pestle sighed, set her jaw, and squared her shoulders. Here went nothing...

"Hey, um - Mortar?"

"Yo."

The blond Earthbender glanced over to the twins again, felt heat scrawling up into her cheeks - they both glanced away, looking in separate directions, trying to give Pestle as much privacy as they could afford. But it, it wasn't really enough, even though they already knew about the nightmare...

"Can I talk to you for a sec? Over there?" Pestle pointed at a spot near the edge of the platform that nobody else had gravitated to yet - away from prying ears, from anybody who would overhear and make fun of her for it later.

Mortar shrugged and pushed up to her feet and Pestle followed, away from the tables. When they were alone, Mortar turned to face her. "So, what's going on? You're more subdued than normal. Have been for a while."

Pestle grimaced. "So you noticed, huh?"

"I'm your sister, I'm supposed to know these things." She shrugged again and rolled her eyes, as if to say, 'duh.'

"How come you didn't ask about it?"

Mortar shrugged again, stuffing her hands in her pockets and rocking back on her heels. "I figured that if you wanted to talk to me about it, you'd come to me when you were ready. That's usually how you do things, and I was wondering what was taking you so long to come around."

"Ah." Pestle glanced away. "Well...it's stupid."

Mortar beamed. "Lay it on me anyway. I can take stupid. And I'm sure it's _not_, and you're just being hard on yourself."

Right. Right, okay. She could - she could do this. Pestle bit her lip and glanced down at her feet, wiggled her toes...and, it was so _easy_, it should be, and why...

"Just - I love you, is all." Pestle sighed and kept her gaze downward. Stupid. It was stupid, this entire vision, this nightmare, and - and this was the best she could come up with in light of nothing else, and she figured it worked just as well. "I'm worried about you. You're my sister."

"Pfeh! You don't need to worry about me." Mortar play-punched Pestle in the arm, grinning. "You and me? We're invincible."

"So - you promise you'll be here for me? No matter what?"

"No matter what." Mortar nodded and wrapped her arms around Pestle's torso, drawing her older sister into a hug. Pestle blushed - Mortar had always been so warm, and she was smaller than Pestle, so it was easy to just hug her and hold her and know that she'd be able to take care of Mortar no matter what happened. Because that's what older sisters did. "Now, let's go back to the table - hopefully nobody's stolen our seats."

"Right." Pestle nodded, pulled away from Mortar, and...okay, yeah, she hadn't told Mortar about the nightmare, but what she'd gotten in response to her last-minute load of crap had been enough to bolster the blond Earthbender. She'd be able to take on anything life would throw at her, and -

"Children, children, children!"

Pestle came to a sharp halt mid-stride - the voice, that _voice_, alien and cold and barren...she glanced up to a tree branch hanging above the head of the platform, where the sound had originated from. Somebody - someone was up there, obscured by the leaves, though she could see his torso and legs clearly, and Pestle felt her stomach flop over and spasm. What the - who - ?

"How kind of you to come at my beck and call, like good little boys and girls ought to do. Thoughtful, delightful - but, some of you are still missing, and this is something I _cannot_ tolerate, no, no, no." The speaker's voice lilted, phlegmy and nasal, using almost a sing-song tone of voice that made Pestle grit her teeth together. He cackled, rapping the tree branch with something - probably his fist. "Those who are missing - they _will_ be punished when I find them."

"Hey, buddy!" Spike, a Freedom Fighter who had been in the forest for years and years, with a headband keeping his sand-colored hair out of his eyes and a pike in one hand, pushed away from his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. "I dunno who the hell you think you are, but - "

"Who am I? _Who_ am I?" the mysterious visitor mimicked, cackling again. "_I_ am your new master. _I_ am your new caretaker, your new father!"

"Oh, give it a rest." Mortar snorted and tossed her head to the side. "You've got one heck of a sense of humor, I'll give you that, but I think it's time we sent you on your way. If you leave quietly, I'm sure Sneers will be willin' to let you go without hitting you _too_ hard."

The person paused. "Sneers? The stout fellow with a topknot? The man who came to meet _me_, tried to repel _me_ from this forest? _Me_, your rightful master?"

"Spirits, this guy is loonier than a tabby fly on catnip..." Mortar glanced over to Spike for a moment before turning her attention to Pestle, and - what, wait, what? "Looks like we've got some work to do, sis. Let's send this guy home with a black eye to remind him who he's messing with."

"Um - um - " Pestle felt reality take two awkward, lurching steps forward before hurtling at a breakneck pace; something wasn't right, _this_ wasn't right, the man hiding in the trees was the one who brought the oppressive atmosphere with him, the one hiding in the trees, his voice, something, everything about him was bad. She didn't think he would be so easy to send packing - there was just, something _about_ him, but...but, Mortar was right, this guy thought he was being funny, but he brought the joke home to the wrong people. She nodded, her heart thundering in her chest, pulse pounding in her ears, and turned to face the man in the tree. If it came down to a fight, there wasn't any actual earth up here, but a few stone cups had been left lying around from lunch, and those would be enough -

"I assure you, girl, I do not kid, no, no, no." With a sharp whistle, the man in the trees made a beckoning motion - and, from one of the connecting bridges, marching onto the dining platform - hulking, broad, solid - tan skin, huge nose, raven-colored hair that had been knocked loose from its topknot - Sneers, Sneers was - his face, his upper lip had swollen and blood had been smeared beneath his nose, across his mouth, and large welt had formed on his left cheek. He looked - tired, exhausted, and as he stumbled into view, his hands shackled behind him, it was then Pestle saw the three bandits, men dressed in filthy black clothes and a patchwork of stolen armor, leading him from behind. What - ?

Pestle's eyes went wide, her breath tight in her chest as she glanced over to Mortar - saw shock, disbelief scrawled across her younger sister's face, shaking her head, as if what she saw was impossible. It was! Sneers - Pestle had never seen him beaten this thoroughly, not after he and Smellerbee got into a bout of fisticuffs over one thing or another, not after he and Jet had had it out following Gaipan, before sending him and Smellerbee and Longshot off to Ba Sing Se...and, and why wasn't he fighting back? The three men holding him, they should have been a cakewalk, Sneers should have been able to flatten them -

"Boys and girls, I present to you your fallen leader." Pestle heard the man in the trees sneer. his voice cocky and arrogant and disgusted all at once. "I shall give the man credit where it's due, yes, I shall, I am a fair-minded individual. He put up a brave fight, valiant, a challenge, definitely. Ultimately, though, he was no match for Destiny, the Destiny set before me by the Spirits themselves - the Destiny to unite you children under one hand - _my_ hand! The hand of the Overdweller!"

The man in the trees - the Overdweller - vaulted down, landed in a crouch, in plain sight - face narrow and rectangular, accentuated cheek bones, tall, lanky, framed with long, oily black hair...wearing spectacles, with one lens blacked out completely in the place of an eyepatch. The spectacles glistened in the steely sunlight as he unfurled himself to his full height, a brilliant crimson coat fluttering around him. Pestle's knees wobbled - hard to, hard to breathe - had to keep standing up -

The man.

That was the man! The man from the nightmares, the man who swept Mortar up, away, sucking her into the ground - leaving Pestle all alone - _no!_


	6. Chapter 3, Part 1

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Chapter 3, Part 1: So I swallow the bitter pill...**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte, and this chapter's cover can be found here:

sioute(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/WWF-5-3-150282923

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"These really _are_ magnificent swords."

Head swimming in a bog of dull aches, Smellerbee tried to look up at the speaker - but her vision blurred, and the muscles in her neck conspired against keeping her chin up. What had happened...? She could only make out splashes of blues nearby, flickering due to the glowing crystals hanging into the ceiling and wall. She heard a shrill whistling noise in her ears, like the wind singing on a blustery day - except they were inside, and the wind shouldn't have been able to get to them from here.

"I saw them before, but I never got to hold them. _Remarkable_."

Struggling to keep her eyes open, Smellerbee realized that there was another person here - talking to _her_, or at least using that pretense. The voice came from behind her, and she tried to turn to face its owner - but she was dizzy, and her muscles refused to obey her. She tried to move her arms, but they had been bound behind her using a short length of - rope, it felt like - and she could do nothing but thrash at her bonds without success. She kicked out, too, but her ankles had been tied securely to the legs of a chair. With a curse, she hung her head and scowled.

"Take it easy. I'm not going to hurt you." The voice's owner set a hand on the back of her chair, his fingers brushing her shoulder. She shivered, realizing the contact had been skin-on-skin; where was her shirt? She blinked to clear her vision and glanced lower - yes, there was her stomach, the skin tan and covering the developing muscles that most Freedom Fighters just _had_, living on a lean diet of fresh-caught meat and berries and being combative. Two telltale curves of fleshtone at the edge of her vision told her more, and more than enough, and she felt her face heating up in - fury, embarrassment, helplessness. What the blistering blue _hell_ had happened? The last thing she could remember was -

_A store on the edge of a clearing in the commercial district, perfect for their purposes because there was a trapdoor to the basement hidden beneath a carpet, and she and Longshot had hidden themselves there, recovered their exhaustion, ate, and then, and then - more flirting, it had gone on for hours it felt like, then her lips to his, she had made the first move because he __wouldn't__ and it was so obvious, and then his hands brushing her cheek, and then, and then, and her shirt had come off, as had his and it was stupid, they shouldn't be doing this here, __now__, but things were already moving and she just felt so hot and he hesitated and then the trapdoor had been flung open above them, and..._

And what? She couldn't remember what followed, and she scowled so deeply that she felt her molars cracking. Somebody must have - and had - found them, and all she could do now, really, was count herself fortunate; at least she still had her pants on. Thank goodness for small victories.

But - was Longshot here with her? Who was their captor - somebody involved with Ty Lee and Azula? He had Jet's swords, that much was for sure - but a _lot _of Fire Nation soldiers had seen them in action, and it could have been any one of the number Jet had felt benevolent enough to spare.

First thing's first.

She blinked again, still trying to clear it out - her gaze was so bleary that it was like looking at something from underwater. Shaking her head, hair flopping in and out of the sides of her vision, she grunted and seethed, "Where's Longshot?" Her tongue had also joined the ranks of body parts that didn't want to work right, and the sentence came out slurred.

"Here, but still unconscious. I tried not to hit him too hard - you've both been out for a few minutes. I barely got you tied up before you woke up."

"Ungh - bet you get a lot of practice in." Ahh, sarcasm. Her life would be so empty without it; maintaining the stinging edge on her tongue was just as important as those on her blades. "So why don't you show yourself? Or are ya too scared that a tied-up, half-naked girl could kick your ass? Because I could, just to give you a fair warning."

"Your sportsmanship is unprecedented," the voice said. She picked the sneer and the roll of the eyes in his tone. "But you need a way out and I might just be your salvation, so don't shut me out just yet." The hand moved away from the chair, and its owner finally walked into view; with her sight still recovering, and a distant throb at the base of her skull becoming more focused, she couldn't really make out who he was - though the voice was familiar, and the associated name and face slipped out of her grasp like a greased pig moose. She could _definitely_ see - maroon clothing, a tunic tucked neatly into a black belt around his waist, and pants the same color as the tunic that flared out before being engulfed by black boots with toes that pointed at sharp, upward angles. He wore maroon armor with gold highlights that fanned across his stomach, chest and shoulders almost like massive scales, fire engraved into the chestplate.

In his hands, he held one of Jet's swords - turning it over by the grip, admiring the blade as it shimmered in the azure illumination cast by the crystals.

This was regal armor - Smellerbee's captive was a man of nobility. That sort of armor could only mean one thing...the Fire Lord's son, Prince Zuko, had found them.

Prince Zuko, Princess Azula - oh yeah, this was _really_ bad news.

"Pfeh," she said, hawking a loogey and spitting it away. "You're related to the crazy one with the blue fire. You killed the Avatar! Why the hell'd you want to help _us_?"

One of the accusations seemed to give him pause; he hesitated, barely noticeable, before continuing. "You're pretty observant for someone who's still reeling from a lump to the back of the head," Zuko mumbled, setting the sword gently on the floor. He lisped as he spoke - and something about that _screamed_ at Smellerbee, she should _know_ this person, she had seen him, heard him _somewhere_...but _where_? "Yes. I'm Zuko, the Fire Prince. But _you_...you knew me by a different name."

Zuko clasped his hands behind his back and craned his head backwards, jutting his chin out; he stayed at Smellerbee's left and did not turn to face her, instead looking in the same direction she had been bound into, as if plastered into place - or as if hiding something, which concerned her more. Vision was better, but - not perfect, things were still just blurry enough to make it difficult. His chin was angled-but-not-sharp and his nose was well-defined; with ash-black hair a few tones lighter than Azula's, he kept it pulled tight into a topknot framed by a golden, flame-patterned brace.

"I did, huh?" Smellerbee quipped, tilting her head sideways and smirking. "Are you going to tell me, or are we playing twenty questions?"

"We only met briefly."

"Ah." Maybe it was true, but she knew veracity lingered somewhere in her spinning mind - just out of reach, the keys not even a fingertips' length away from her, even though she pressed her shoulder up against the cold bars of the cage, her head crooked into an awkward position. (That had happened before, in the literal sense. It hadn't been a fun experience.) They _did_ know each other. "Should I feel honored that I'm in your presence? Or just angry for what your nation has done to mine?"

"I'd prefer if it wasn't 'honored.'" Zuko turned his head away from her. "As the Fire Prince, I'm responsible for both my actions and those of my nation."

Smellerbee remembered hearing that before, from a much more resolute source, but damned if she could remember where.

"Then angry it is." She lowered her head and snarled. "Where to start...? Oh yes! Your people killed my family. Did you know that? And not just mine. You indiscriminately burn down villages, decimating lives as you march towards your goals of conquest. I personally know and helped care for eighteen orphans who had their families burnt to ash around them! Your soldiers destroy without discretion, sundering cities, forests - and if this keeps up the world will be left a charred, smoldering husk. The Spirits would abandon us and those not dead in the war would only have a dying planet to stand on. And thanks to you, you _personally_, the planet's best hope for salvation lies dead in the catacombs of ancient Ba Sing Se." Smellerbee glanced down at the floor. "Your people drove a friend of mine - close enough to be my brother - insane. So insane, that he threw away a second chance at life to chase after an illusion."

"...I wish I could say I was sorry," Zuko said, his voice soft. "But I don't have the words deep enough to do you justice, for all the pain you've had to suffer through. But for what it's worth...I _am_ sorry about Jet."

She snapped her head up so suddenly that her neck popped. She inhaled sharply, but it was like sucking in the frigid air of winter when the temperature was at its lowest, when the remaining grass crunched underfoot and stabbed the bare soles like a prickle bush. It made her chest ache. Tingles zig-zagged up her arms to her shoulders, and she became keenly aware of her pulse throbbing behind her left ear.

_Jet._ Somehow, Zuko knew - but the Fire Prince and the leader of the Freedom Fighters had never met, or else surely one or both would have died. Unless Jet, like Smellerbee, had known him under a different name, and didn't know he was a Firebender -

The thought never had to be finished - it was the last puzzle piece she needed to see the bigger picture, and as it came together, the tantalizing information lurking just beyond the cage, just out of sight, came to her in a jolt of frozen, heavy reality.

"_Lee_." Smellerbee tried - so hard - to sound, accusatory, enraged, venomous - but all that came out was a whisper (so feeble, so pathetic). Her voice and the power behind it had been stolen from her by the revelation, and Zuko whirled around to face her.

The scar. The _scar_ - it was identical, the burn scar shaped like a fire burst centered on his left eye, sweeping back to his ear and temple, nipping at his hairline. Her vision had stopped playing tricks on her. The sapphire, oceanic glimmering from the crystals cast pits of shadow over the rugged mark, made his golden eyes glisten. It _was_ Lee - the teen from the ferry with his old uncle, the focus of Jet's obsession, the reason the Dai Li took him in the first place, brainwashed him, _killed him_ -

"He was right," Smellerbee murmured, staring at Zuko for as long as she could - then looking down, at her knees, her vision blurring again. But not because of the lump on her head; this time, her eyes stung, and, and, her face got so _hot_, and her nose began to run - but, no, don't cry, not here, not in front of _him_, this is already embarrassing enough as it is - "He was right the whole time and we just turned our backs on him." She felt her voice turn sharp and wibble at the same time and drew a deep breath to try to calm herself. "You and your awful Uncle were Firebenders, and we just let him get arrested because we wanted our second chance more than we wanted to help prove him right."

"Look, I didn't want any trouble," Zuko said, his voice getting hard for the first time since the Freedom Fighter had awakened. "Uncle Iroh and I were going to Ba Sing Se for the same reason you guys were. We just wanted a life safe from the Fire Nation; it was Jet who tried to compromise all that!" He moved closer to her - as if to console her, but the notion seemed absurd just by matter of virtue - and she jerked away from him, her hair swishing and falling back to her scalp.

"Sure." Smellerbee's voice became thick, lost its edge - but she wouldn't _cry_. "You say that, and yet here you are, wearing the armor of the enemy and being touted as one of the people to fell Ba Sing Se, the one who killed the Avatar. There's no safehaven left! There's no place for the innocent to turn to, any warriors still living are run ragged, and the Fire Nation is going to win the war because of _you_!"

"I know!" Zuko snarled, throwing his hands back. "You think I'm ignorant? That's why I sided with Azula! That's why I betrayed Uncle and - "

The silence in the air was so sudden that Smellerbee forced herself to look up at him. He had his arms at his sides again, his fists clenched and eyes narrow - if they focused on her or the floor, she couldn't tell. The old man on the ferry had been...nice. Nicer than Lee/Zuko had been, even though he'd called her a young man and riled her something fierce. Of the pair, she preferred the old man - he'd been in the street as the fight between Jet and Zuko spilled out there calling for a cessation. Neutrally - not accusing Jet of one thing or another, just begging that he leave in peace so _everyone_ could continue onward with their new lives.

He'd done more to save Jet than either Smellerbee or Longshot at the time.

But - but don't let _him_ know that.

"You really are a piece of work," Smellerbee whispered, snorting. "Jet's dead. He died in Ba Sing Se, fighting the Dai Li. That's why I have the swords. That's why Longshot an' I turned away from our new lives and decided t' keep fighting in his name."

Zuko drew a slow, deep breath and expelled it through his nose. "That's...that's very noble of you."

"It was that or rot beneath Lake Laogai. We chose to keep on keeping on; that's what Freedom Fighters do...not like you'd ever understand. Jet was wrong about that much."

The words made him - almost flinch, but not quite - but it seemed to have enough impact on him where he leant forward and started to work on undoing the knotwork keeping Smellerbee's wrists bound.

"We've wasted too much time," he murmured, his voice low, hushed. "Azula showed us your wanted posters - "

Huh. They had wanted posters? Though their current situation kept Smellerbee's attention in the here-and-now, she acknowledged that little tidbit of awesome in the back of her mind.

" - so you two are lucky I remembered who you were. Ah, there - " her wrists came free, and Smellerbee pulled them out in front of her, wrapping her one of her arms around her chest. There mayn't have been much to see, but it was still humiliating to be exposed in front of - of _Zuko_, in particular, but also a member of the enemy and a person who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. Being naked in front of the other Freedom Fighters had never been awkward - so many orphans, so many hours in the day to bathe, and all that. And she had always just been one of the guys, after all, even when the biological clock screamed at her to tell her otherwise.

She let Zuko continue to untie her; she couldn't feel her dagger pressing into the small of her back, where she normally kept it holstered, even though she remembered still having it on when things between herself and Longshot had started getting..._intimate_. Besides, Zuko trusted her enough to let her free, so - so he _probably_ wasn't expecting her to attack. Better, either way, to keep herself in check for now. "Azula doesn't play friendly, as you probably saw," Zuko continued, keeping his eyes down on his work - but the blush across his face was just as clear as the scar. "She'll want to torture the two of you. She hasn't had any prisoners like that in a while."

"And you _don't_ want to?"

"Please, I'm not that sadistic. Besides, I...I've made a lot of mistakes in the past month and a half." Zuko's gaze flickered away, and for a moment it was like she was talking to Jet all over again - shaggy-headed and sharp-nosed, with skin tanned by constant exposure to the sun and a strand of wheat or a twig sticking out between his teeth, arced downward because of the melancholy in his voice. "Betraying my Uncle is the most shameful thing I've ever done. I'm - I'm starting to think I should have stood by him, and the Avatar, and saved Ba Sing Se. This may not be much...but I think it's a step in the right direction. You guys - you fight for the same reasons as the Avatar's group, even though you're a bit...tactless." He heaved a mighty sigh through his nose and began working on Smellerbee's other ankle. "It's the only redemption I can seek right now until I know what my _real_ path is."

It _was_ like talking to Jet all over again. Right after the dam mission - their first brush with the Avatar. Smellerbee and Longshot ready to turn away and leave, Jet asking to come along - so unsure if he'd been doing right after all, seeking some way to cleanse his conscious of his sins. She felt more than heard herself sighing, slumping over slightly...in another world, where Jet had not been so pathological in his hatred of the Fire Nation, he and Zuko would probably have been everything Jet had wanted from "Lee" on the ferry ride - a close teammate, a compatriot, a brother-in-arms. Zuko might even have decided to join the Freedom Fighters, given enough harassment.

If Smellerbee had known for sure that Zuko _had_ been a Firebender on that ferry, then she wasn't entirely sure if her decision - a resounding 'I-don't-think-it's-a-good-idea-Jet' - would have changed. After Spatula, Firebending Freedom Fighters under Jet's purview proved to be a...distinctly _bad_ idea.

(Ah, yes. Spatula was it - he was the one to acknowledge his mistakes to her, knowing without a doubt and without hesitation that the sins of his nation were a burden for him to bear the weight of. Funny how a timid, clumsy soldier had been more sure of that and eager for redemption than the Fire Prince.)

"I...alright. What's our situation, then?" Smellerbee asked, clambering to her feet with the last of the bonds undone. She glanced over her shoulder - and there sat Longshot in another chair, his head bowed, his back turned to the pair. Zuko began undoing the ropes keeping him in place, and Smellerbee started to hunt around for her discarded clothes, spotting the bandages to wrap around her chest in a heap in one corner of the storehouse, almost hidden beneath a shelf of pickled beats.

"We - my sister and the others - split up, thinking that you would do - well - something like this. Well, not _this_," Zuko added (and very hastily), "but you know what I mean. I volunteered to check basements and my girlfriend, Mai, did the same thing. Azula and Ty Lee - you met her, the circus girl with the chi-blocking - are sticking to the streets and rooftops in case you try anything unprecedented. It won't take the others long to realize they haven't seen me in a while. Our window is closing."

Saying that she trusted the Fire Prince would be an outright lie, but the swordswoman knew, at least, that they could either try their luck with his aid and potentially escape, or turn on him and have to stand tall against _four_ sadistic Fire Nation teens. Zuko killed Aang, and had helped sew a vicious lie that lead to Jet's premature demise. She would only place as much faith in him as absolutely necessary - only for the time being - while making sure to mark him as an enemy later. Smellerbee started tying the bandages around her chest, and Zuko fell silent; she turned his attention to him only when decency had found her again and the bandages remained securely in place. He pulled the last knot on Longshot's chair free and began to approach the swordswoman - and Longshot lunged up from his chair, scooping up something shimmering and glistening from the floor with one fluid motion, grabbing Zuko from behind -

The crescent moon hand guard of Jet's sword pressed against the Fire Prince's throat, Longshot's bandaged fingers curled tightly around the handle, his other arm hooked around one of Zuko's. Smellerbee halted in her tracks, and Zuko - thank the Spirits - chose not to move, instead setting his mouth into a tight frown and narrowing his eyes. Longshot peered out from around Zuko's head, and even in the less-than-stellar lighting, the - the outright _fury_ in his eyes was so obvious, so rife. Something in Smellerbee started to ache just by seeing it, because this was beyond Longshot's own glacial brand of rage - this was something, something bigger, dwarfing even the mighty ice flows that drifted calmly in the recesses of his mind.

"Longshot," Smellerbee whispered.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"What, exactly," Zuko said, his voice both calm and menacing at the same time, "do you suppose you're doing, archer?"

Don't speak - don't speak - for the love of the Spirits, don't _speak_. He's not worth wasting words on. Longshot simply narrowed his eyes, kept his teeth clenched - he tried to press his lips together, but he was just so, so _cold_ inside, his fingertips numb and muscles tensed, that they peeled back. It might have been a smile, but he didn't _feel_ like smiling, so the result could only be something more gruesome. Zuko's armor pressed into his bare chest and abdomen, but he couldn't _feel_ it, the numb sensation swelling to dominate his entirety. His grip on Jet's sword - his _best friend's_ sword - remained steady. His hand did not shake. He wouldn't be much of an archer if they did.

"Longshot," Smellerbee said again, this time her voice louder - but Longshot only let his gaze flicker over to her for a moment, before turning it back to the Firebender he held as tightly as he could. He knew, distantly, that it wasn't a perfect pin - but the handguards on Jet's swords were razor-sharp (or else Smellerbee would not have been able to ascend the wall of Omashu with them) and he made sure Zuko could _feel_ it, could feel the - the stinging, the ice-cold nip at the surface of his skin. The same chill that had taken Longshot and swallowed him whole. He didn't care. He surrendered himself to it because - because if he let himself think _rationally_, if he let himself be Longshot-the-Level-Headed, he might - might let Zuko _go_, and Jet would never have had that, not after, not after everything he had just heard -

"Calm down, please." The archer could hear an alien tone in Bee's voice, but - no, drown it out, Longshot, don't listen, don't -

"You were awake the entire time," Zuko surmised, his body still, his voice neutral. "You heard the story."

Yes. Yes, that was precisely it. He nodded in response. (No need to be obstinate, after all.) And now he would rectify the situation, like he ought to have done in Ba Sing Se.

"There was nothing we _could_ have done in Ba Sing Se." Smellerbee again - so strange, her voice thick, that foreign element ever present but indefinable from behind the wall of frost which he placed himself. "We chose - _we chose_ - to let Jet get in trouble. It didn't matter if he was right or not. If Lee - Zuko - and his Uncle were actually Firebenders. We believed their need for a second chance was as big as ours. That they would _strive_ for a clean slate just like we planned on doing."

So what? What difference did that make, where did Zuko get off trying to absolve himself of Jet's murder? Their leader's blood was on this man's hands, couldn't she _see_ that? Was she blind?

"No," she whispered, and - sorrow crept in there too, for a moment alone, but joined by a graceful, lethal partner: slender, razor-sharp irony. "But I think _you_ are. Funny, the archer who can't see."

He didn't understand at first. The air was so thick - so heavy - that every breath he drew and expelled felt forced, like his very lungs had begun to freeze over as well. Zuko did not move except for the gentle swelling of his chest beneath Longshot's arm, and Smellerbee - he could see her only peripherally (he was too busy focusing on the damned Fire Prince, the unscarred side of his face so close, ready to be - to be set in fleshen _stone_, to stop moving, frozen in time forever by Longshot's ice), dressed fully from the waist down as they had left each other, now with her bandages secured back into place. He couldn't meet her face - _wouldn't_ meet her face. But what was she talking about...?

"Idiot." The word came out as a half-scoff. "If Zuko is responsible for Jet's murder, then so are we. _We_ chose to let him go alone into that tea shop. _We_ watched as the Dai Li dragged him off. _We_ tried to move on after he disappeared. _We_ helped the Avatar's friends realize he was brainwashed, leading to Lake Laogai, and Long Feng, and, and, and that rock crushed his ribs and - " She cut herself off and glanced away, the foreign tone in her voice finally deflating, dissolving into flat apathy. "All I know...is that Zuko is willing to help make up for his involvement by helping us escape, just like we're fighting on because we fight to survive. Kill him if that'll make you feel better, but it won't do us any good in the long run."

"If anything," Zuko said, "my death would make your escape all but impossible. My sister and I may not be as close as some siblings, but she'll take any excuse she can get to punish Earth Kingdom loyalists - of course, assuming she can beat my girlfriend to you. I don't think even Azula has _that_ much control over her."

"Do what you want," Smellerbee said, turning away - like the problem wasn't hers to bear! - and returning to the search for her clothes. "Just...I hope there's enough of the Longshot I love in there to do the right thing. 'Kay?"

_'The Longshot I love'._ The warmth behind the phrase - it was so _sincere_, the truth so powerful, that it was enough to finally get the archer's gaze off his hostage. From behind the shelter of ice (because - wasn't that it was, a safe place for him to hide from his own rage?), Longshot-the-Level-Headed scrabbled for purchase, and at last the unfamiliar emotion in Smellerbee's voice registered to the archer.

She - she had been _begging_.

Bee _never_ begged.

The ice in his blood thawed, and wrapped in his fingers he could feel the leather grip of Jet's sword, the power almost radiating out from his hand and spreading to the rest of him - spreading out and down and around and stopping at last in his chest.

He had only ever touched Jet's swords after re-purchasing them in Ba Sing Se, but the circumstances had been different then. In Ba Sing Se, it had been about preserving a part of - of Jet and the Freedom Fighters' identity. He had intended to bring them back to the little cave near Lake Laogai and letting Smellerbee - Jet's apprentice in the use of bladed weaponry, Jet's second in command, Jet's adopted little sister - decide what to do with them. While the leather felt the same in the Upper Ring, it hadn't had any power; not like now, where the strength flowing from beneath his fingers was overwhelming, scorching-hot. And too suddenly, the curved sword weighed heavier than iron, threatening to tear him loose and throw him upon the ground.

He couldn't bear the burden of that weight. He was terrible at close-combat fighting, and these swords could only be held by a person with the capacity to lead. He didn't have that in him.

His hands trembled. Smellerbee - her tunic and armor gathered up into a bundle in her arms - turned to face him just as he let the sword clatter to the stone floor and released Zuko from his grip. The Fire Prince stepped away - he didn't shove Longshot or leap to safety, because he knew - and Longshot could see it in his posture - that the ordeal had passed.

And suddenly - there was Smellerbee, holding him, her arms wrapped around his body, her head buried in the crook of his neck, her skin hot against his, and he could _feel_ her pulse fluttering against him. She smelled of sweat and dirt and the salted meat they'd eaten while flirting, distantly of the honey-syrup-hickory-cinnamon scent of Hong Ye, and of the tangy oil she used in the upkeep of her knife and Jet's swords (and lilacs). She felt, for a moment, frail as he wrapped his arms around her in turn, but the toned muscle beneath her skin reminded him of just how tough she was - and how capable she could be of bouncing back.

"I knew you were still there," she whispered to him.

Longshot placed a hand on the back of Smellerbee's head and ran his fingers through her shaggy mane. He pressed his lips to the side of her head and kissed her, gently. Subtly. She purred beside him, and already he felt as if the incident were far behind him.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Zuko had been learning – slowly – that forgiveness primarily needed to start with the self. The process was hard; it was alright to admit your mistakes and learn from them, but burdening oneself down with unnecessary guilt made the path one walked all that much murkier. The line was so fine as to be nearly inscrutable, and Zuko oftentimes had to squint to find the difference.

(_Uncle would have said it something like that._)

(_Shut up, self._)

So when Longshot parted from Smellerbee and bowed to the Fire Prince, using his hands to form the traditional sign of respect native to the Fire Nation – one hand clenched into a tight fist, the other's palm pressed against it with the fingers straight up – Zuko realized that the archer was familiar with that line and could probably see it clearly even if he were taking down soldiers on a crowded battlefield. In the woods. At night. During a typhoon.

The sincerity of this nonverbal apology stirred something within the Fire Prince he wasn't entirely sure he could have placed. In that grungy, ill-lit storehold basement beneath an abandoned restaurant, all Zuko could do that felt appropriate was to return the bow and offer the same hand gesture.

"Wow, Longshot. I didn't know you knew Fire Nation formalities," Smellerbee said, her eyes – turns out they were almond-shaped when not obscured by the headband she wore – wide and proud. She began to tug on the sleeves of her tunic.

Longshot straightened upright and nodded; Zuko relaxed as well, and turned his attention to the nearest wall, pretending to be fascinated by the filthy, dusty stone so that the Freedom Fighters would have the privacy to dress.

Zuko didn't know why he refrained from telling the duo the truth about the Avatar. About how _Azula_ had been the one to strike him down, and how he had survived the attack, and how he was still out there now, fighting the war in secrecy - somewhere. Assuming he _could_ fight. Maybe it was because they probably wouldn't believe him (and what reason did they have to believe such an absurd notion?). While it rang the validity bell dangling inside his head, the Fire Prince felt that another reason lurked just beyond the obvious, and he could not pin it down to examine it.

It only took a few minutes for the pair to ready themselves, but each passing second felt like a trap snapping shut around them. Azula was too smart - she _knew_ something fishy was going on by now. And he couldn't be seen moving alongside the Freedom Fighters, because - because that would be making a _choice_, shifting off from his current path, and he wasn't sure if he could do that. If betraying his Nation was the right thing to do. But if that was the case, then what _was_ the right thing to do...?

_"You called off the other soldiers, Zuzu? I can't tell if you're a genius, or cracked."_

Azula's voice surfaced from the depths of his subconscious, and at first Zuko couldn't figure out why he'd thought of her, of all people. Her brand of advice generally meant trouble, and deferring to her felt like submitting ones' self to the gaping, rancid, acid-slopping mouth of a man-eating pitcher plant. But there was a hidden nugget of wisdom in the sentence, and Zuko just had to turn it the right way, look at it from the right angle, and the solution would become as apparent in the reflection of a well-polished sword.

But _what_? Maybe the Freedom Fighters had a chance of sneaking out of the commercial district by slipping between the gaps cast by the net he was supposed to help Mai, Azula and Ty Lee weave, but that wouldn't make them any safer. They would need to escape the city entirely, and the easiest way to do that was by crossing the bridge to the mainland -

The Fire Prince gasped, at last finding the line connecting Point A to Point B. He raised his head up to focus his gaze on the dusty juncture where wall met ceiling, and felt a miniature smirk crawl across his face. Of _course_.

"I have a plan," Zuko said at last.

"Good. You can turn around now, by the way - we're decent."

The Fire Prince did, and found the Freedom Fighters fully armed and dressed, standing next to each other. Longshot kept his bow in one hand and his arms at his sides; he let his gaze rest on Zuko, and the latter did not need to have some sort of bizarre sixth sense (as the girl seemed to have) to feel bona fide, awkward tension in the air.

Just dismiss it for now. Squaring his shoulders off, Zuko said, "Here's what we're gonna do..."


	7. Chapter 3, Part 2

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Chapter 3, Part 2: This guy is giving off a murderous vibe. Even getting close to him makes my skin crawl...**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte, and this chapter's cover can be found here:

sioute(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/WWF-5-3-150282923

**SCENE DIVIDE**

The concern that had been niggling at the nape of Mai's neck unfurled itself into a clusterbomb of irritation when one of the buildings a few blocks off erupted into fire, a flaming orb about the size of a komodo rhino's head spewing from the clay roof. From the streets, she couldn't see much, even standing uphill from the ruckus, other buildings crowded around each other like a bustling, crowded marketplace, obscuring true line of sight.

The fire that lit up the gloomy sky had been orange; not Azula's telltale sapphire, and since there wouldn't be any common soldiers down here _anyway_...had to be Zuko. The boy could fend for himself, but it wouldn't surprise Mai if he needed somebody there to save his sorry butt.

"Dammit, Zuko," She mumbled, abandoning her sweeping path on the lookout for renegades. Whirling in order to collect her flowing robes, she charged for the nearest building and pushed up along the wall, rising and jumping away when her momentum couldn't carry her any higher. Catching onto the building parallel, she kicked away again and landed in a crouch on the roof of the first store. From there, she started to run - the roofs being mostly flat letting her charge full speed without having to worry about losing her balance or tripping. Keeping her upper body lowered and her arms swept out behind her, the wind tore at her face and clawed her robes, flinging her raven hair about her, the heat from the explosion already pressing up against her like a swell of bad atmosphere.

From the peripheral of her vision she caught a glance of Ty Lee, likewise dashing across the rooftops to the building; casting her gaze about without turning her head too much, Mai failed to spot Azula, and wondered where the Fire Princess had vanished to and where she intended to reappear. This little escapade wouldn't be nearly as interesting if she chose to sit it out entirely, and Mai _knew_ her friend and Zuko's sister would never pass up an opportunity as ripe as this one. Hell, this was probably like ever _other_ time they eased themselves into a combat situation - Azula would sweep in at just the right moment to make everything worse for the two renegades. Her and her stupid desire for dramatic flair; if Mai were the kind to care, she might actually have been annoyed how Azula always stole the glory.

From the roof of the building, through the hole caused by Zuko's fireball, leapt two forms; she recognized Zuko instantly, garbed in what looked to be the remnants of his armor - one of the shoulder pads had been torn free, and his tunic had a sizable rip along the side. The other one was the shaggy-haired boy from Azula's wanted posters, ashen scorch marks on his face, armor, the curve-bladed swords clutched tightly in his hands. He swung hard with the left, and Zuko brought up his arm to counter; the blade clashed with a cascade of sparks against his metal gauntlet, and they kicked away from each other, landing in a crouch several feet apart from each other.

Mai leapt over another gap and reached for three of the knives secreted away in her flowing, maroon sleeves; she couldn't throw, not yet, she wasn't close enough - just one more building's worth of space and she'd be in range to do some damage, end the fight early, save Zuko's butt (oh he would have to _deliver_ in return later on and the thought was enough motivation to make her build up more speed, leap over that last gap, throw the knives that were already between her fingers, and then gone, whistling through the air) -

And before they could strike down the swordsman, three arrows erupted from street level, between two of the buildings, colliding with her knives, knocking them off-course - they clattered away, off their mark, and Mai found herself wanting to drop a nasty curse.

_The archer_. The damn archer had escaped the fireballed building and somehow stuck to the streets -

"You go help Zuko!" Ty Lee called, and Mai glanced at her for just a second. The perpetually cheerful, round-faced girl - her sienna hair pulled back into that long ponytail flowing behind her like a scarf - wore a serious expression. "I can handle the bow and arrows guy!"

Mai paused, then nodded. "Don't get too far away from him or else he'll have the advantage. Be careful!"

"You got it!" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blur of pink and rose leap and then vanish, and then herself juked sideways just in case Longshot the Hawkeye decided to wait for a Fire Nation girl to pass by overhead. Changing her path like this wasn't the quickest way to Zuko's side, but it was the safest. Jumping perpendicular to her previously established path, she readjusted toward Zuko once more, shifting her weight so her ankles would not take most of the brunt. Dashing, leaping, landing and running once more - to an outsider, this Mai-of-Action would be inscrutable compared next to the bitter-cold-sarcasm Passive-Mai. She wasn't allowed to express herself in the treacherous, groggy circles of politicians - to chance tangoing amongst thin, razor-sharp slivers of red tape that could lacerate flesh to those who didn't have the power or place. Fine, things could _stay_ like that. All she needed were her knives and a good fight any day of the week, and the poor sap at the receiving end of her blades would see the _true_ Mai, the real thing, no red tape, no politics, no holds-freaking-barred.

Her robes swished around her legs, with cool air rushing up along the skin hiding under layers of clothes, playing coyfully with her knees, and there, she was close enough -

Zuko, the idiot, rushed in, bringing one leg up for a fierce downward kick; the shaggy-headed renegade dodged to the side and swiped at him with one of the swords. Zuko twisted, avoided the blow, only to crash into a clenched fist; his chest plate absorbed the blow, but even from here Mai could see that it hurt him. Served him right - what was he thinking, fighting so sloppily? He was taking on a kid at least three years younger than himself, holding a pair of swords that looked awkward in his hands - like he hadn't mastered them.

The urge to curse grew more persistent, but she denied it outright in order to press closer. With Zuko so close to the kid, even Mai had to admit she'd have trouble not hitting her idiot boyfriend.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Smellerbee loved a good challenge, and unfortunately, Zuko didn't feel like providing one.

"You're a terrible dance partner," she hissed, ducking under a fireball hurled too obviously, twisting around and bypassing an opportunity to dig the hook of Jet's sword into his side. Louder, she added, "Fight me like you mean it, Firebender!"

"What's with all the hate all of a sudden?" Zuko whispered back, again attacking her with the grace of a man half-drowned in molasses.

"Motivation! You're not fighting realistically, and if your sister is half as clever as the rumors say, she'll see right through it." Smellerbee leapt backwards and snarled. Loudly enough to be heard by anyone nearby, she said, "You fight like a girl!"

Zuko's expression soured. "Bold talk."

"He's right, Zuko. You _are_ fighting like a girl."

The hoarse voice did not catch Smellerbee by surprise; so achingly slow had her dance with Zuko been that she'd seen the raven-haired knife thrower coming buildings away. Still, she pretended to start, turning her body enough to see the black-and-maroon-robed girl while keeping Zuko in her sights as well. This newcomer - not Azula or Ty Lee, so most likely Zuko's girlfriend (Mai, he'd said her name was) - had pinned her hair up into two buns at either side of her head that trailed stomach-length ponytails down over the front of her shoulders, draped over her clothing. She held three knives between the fingers on her right hand and crouched down in a position to throw them.

"Mai, stay out of this! I can handle this peasant."

Smellerbee felt the need to facepalm. Zuko's acting skills? _Sub-par at best_. His tone lacked the right inflection - more like he was a parody of himself than anything else. The Freedom Fighter could see Mai hiking an eyebrow, and years of reading Longshot told her exactly what ran through the knife-thrower's mind: was Zuko _serious_?

It was a little premature, but if Smellerbee didn't execute her defeat of Zuko _now_, the Fire Prince would ruin everything because of some bizarre need to hold back. If it was more of his conflicting desire to do the right thing for the world versus doing the right thing for his country, there was absolutely no room for it.

"Oh grow up a little, will you?" Mai shot, frowning. "Don't be so prideful."

"I - well, I - "

"She's got you whipped," Smellerbee said, smirking.

"I - I am _not_ whipped - !"

"Huh." Mai crooked her head to the side and let her eyes slide from Zuko to Smellerbee. "I think he's got a point, Zuko."

The next thing Smellerbee was aware of was blistering heat on her left; she leapt backwards just as the fire wall roared past the spot she'd occupied not moments before. Mai jumped out of the way as well, but had to leap to the opposite end of the roof; Zuko stood open now and Smellerbee lunged, hooking the sword around one of his ankles and twisting, sending the Fire Prince skidding along and over the edge of the rooftop. The resounding crash of his armor on the stone alley echoed up into the grey sky, leaving the Freedom Fighter and the knife thrower alone on the rooftop.

"Well, I guess I'll just have to show you how a _real_ girl fights," Mai sighed, casting an amber-eyed glance to the spot where Zuko had vanished before returning her attention to Smellerbee. Something about her bothered the young swordswoman; when she wasn't focusing on a _target_, she seemed dull, slothful - almost bored. And when Mai looked at, well, Smellerbee in this case, she metamorphosised into something completely different. Sharper, possessing the same wild quality of a wildcat ready to pounce its long-stalked prey, yet still hidden by a nigh platonic posture. She was good at keeping herself in control.

It bugged the hell out of Smellerbee, but letting Mai see _that_ would be like offering your head to said wildcat alongside a pinch of oregano. Sure, it wouldn't take the oregano, but it'd eat your head and like it all the same. All Smellerbee could do was crouch down and bring Jet's swords up to bare, a roguish grin playing across her lips. The sun wasn't out – but the cloud cover was a bright enough shade of gray that the blades shimmered anyway.

"Fair enough. I hope you don't mind if this lady does the same."

Mai seemed unperturbed by the revelation and said, "Boy, girl, it's all the same to me."

"Good."

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Ty Lee proved herself to be something of an enigma, and Longshot found himself having trouble deciding what, exactly, needed to be done about her.

Juking down another side-alley, the archer clutched his bow tightly in one hand with an arrow nocked, weighing out his options. He could hear her keeping pace with him, her footsteps much lighter, not digging as hard into the rocky ground. She was close and getting closer by the second; to buy time, he sprang up off from the street, whirling in the air and firing the arrow at Ty Lee's feet, causing her to sidestep. She didn't miss a beat, but it widened the distance between the two enough so that when Longshot landed, he'd at least have a few more seconds to think.

Better be very short thoughts, or else he'd be screwed.

On the one side - Ty Lee was Fire Nation. In the forest, that would have been justification enough for him to draw lifeblood, to watch her stunned expression as sticky, wet maroon blossomed, darkening the silky rose cloth of her shirt - ruining it, but she wouldn't have needed it anymore, and that sort of stuff wasn't salvageable. (It looked like it gave poor thermal protection, and it was too flowy to serve as decent underclothes - risked getting caught on brambles or stray, curious tree branches.)

But, those had been Jet's ways, and becoming the same Longshot from back then felt like a daunting task too steeped with obstacles. Like climbing a bare cliff side where the only handholds were suspicious-looking holes burrowed out of the stone that _might_ be home to poisonous spider-snakes. And he didn't really want to abandon the person he was working on becoming, just for the sake of resolving a battle via the swiftest route possible. He wouldn't allow himself to fall that far and Smellerbee would absolutely hate him for it if he did.

(That last part was really what did it, he figured. The pair strove so hard to evolve in this adverse climate; turning back on that would be the ultimate folly. Might as well go back to the cell in Lake Laogai at that rate - so, no thank you, sir.)

And then, there was the other extreme - stopping and trying to convince her that this was wrong. That she was better than to serve her nation blithely, that she could make friends _and_ stay within her obviously-expressed and clearly-defined moral boundaries. (Having those must have been a blessing; there were too many shades of gray when you were a Freedom Fighter, and unfortunately it was just something that came with the territory.) But as friendly and open and clear-cut as Ty Lee seemed, her loyalty to the Fire Nation also went unwavered. Attempting to turn her would be futile at best; she'd need her _own_ reason to change sides, and any story Longshot weaved about the children - the fires - the devastation of spirit and mind - would not carry the same weight.

Yet, she still seemed..._sympathetic_, when Longshot had implied his "inability" to speak on the basin. She had been sympathetic about his silence, and sympathetic that Azula might probably kill them (if 'might probably' could equate to 'will definitely,' in any case); Longshot had never once been put in such conflict about an enemy, because usually - anyone who threatened their chances for survival just needed to be defeated cold and sound, because survival was the key, it was the most important thing, Jet had stressed it Way Back Then and it was one of the few things he'd managed to consistently remain right about all these years.

So. Killing her would mean unnecessary regression, because - although she wasn't innocent - she showed potential for reform. But reforming her was out of the question as well, because her patriotism seemed just enough that Longshot would have trouble converting her to the other side (at least, that was the impression she gave him). The only option left was to disable her, but at this range he wouldn't be able to do anything. He clenched the grip of his bow even tighter and grimaced.

He rounded another corner, spotted a stack of crates piled up next to a store that had previously sold off various kinds of Earth Kingdom armor, and leap-frogged up the piled wooden boxes to reach the rooftops. Ty Lee was quick on his heels, flipping and cartwheeling and showboating, but not entirely out of vanity - because it made her move faster and made her harder to hit. Ty Lee was almost at arm's length again; Longshot prided himself on speed, but she'd close the distance before he could draw, turn _and_ shoot, and by then he'd be reduced to Noodle Arms all over again. Not an option. Grunting, his lungs burning, his muscles striving for rest, the archer grit his teeth together and whirled around, bring his bow upward in a sharp arc, and he hadn't wanted to do this in the basin, but -

He could see the surprise on Ty Lee's round, expressive face - it was so much like the moon, really, because the Moon Spirit had affixed a permanent, lopsided smile on its namesake's surface. Ty Lee just had a circular, pale head, and in the brief moment of time where Longshot lapsed back into the brutal nature of close-quarters combat, he could register not a smile but twinkle-eyed shock, her jaw slightly agape, caught off-guard. Longshot empathized - he felt just as surprised himself, as time felt like it had slowed down just for _this _moment. The decision had been so swift that he had difficulty believing he'd even gone through with it.

But he had. Time sped up again and the gazelk bone limb of the bow whipped across Ty Lee's cheek, erasing the shock and the nigh-juvenile spark of curiosity from her face. She stumbled backwards in a heap, and before she could properly recover, Longshot drew three arrows from his quiver and fired, each one lodging into the stone roof of the armory store, pinning her big, swooshy pants and sleeves to the flat, rugged surface.

Ty Lee whipped her head up to face the archer, glaring - her wide, saucer-like eyes stinging with hurt, although if it was from embarrassment or being bow-whipped, Longshot couldn't quite tell. Under the pale, metallic sky, he could make out the red mark on her cheek where he'd made contact, a thin, red slash that would probably turn black and blue before the week had gone out. She lunged in an attempt to jab him, but the arrows held her clothes fast and she stumbled back onto her butt, only one arm free. Enough for her to lift her upper body, but not so much so to get her very far.

"Hmph. Spoilsport," Ty Lee said, her lower lip pouting.

Longshot could only fix her with a helpless shrug and a grin that, he knew, was just a hair too smug. Ah well. He deserved to feel a _little_ smarmy for this move.

It wouldn't hold the girl for long, of course. It was only a temporary solution; he'd need something that would hold her far faster than his arrows, something that would still incapacitate without killing.

He glanced back to where Smellerbee fought with Mai - the building had gotten so distant now that each girl stood barely the height of the top joint in his pinkie finger. Had he _really_ been running for that long, that far? His lungs seared with every breath, but it was cooling - soothing at the same time. The peak of his physical strength was coming again, because his rest in the basement of that grocer had been too short and too suddenly interrupted. And then Bee had wanted to, to, to do _that_ thing, which - no, focus, Longshot, focus! He had to think of -

Wait.

His eyes drifted to the right of the partially-demolished store Smellerbee still remained atop of. One of these stores had a water tower on top of it, made of - oddly enough - aged brown wood the color of dust. Even from here, he could see the splits in the water tower's support beams, how dry and fragile and twisted the entire unit had become - it was so ancient, and had suffered from so much neglect with the city's evacuation, that it looked nigh ready to collapse. Even better - most of the support beams had crumbled away, burnt and charred by some firefight or another - it wouldn't take much to tip it over.

_That_ would be his incapacitator.

Flashing Ty Lee a taunting smirk, the archer crouched down low and charged past her, sticking to her left in order to avoid her freed arm. The rooftop impacted his ankles, his knees, and it would only be a few seconds before Ty Lee could successfully free herself. That was okay. Seconds were all he needed; anything more and the set-up would be too obvious.

While he could, he drew more arrows and launched them, three at a time, into very specific points of the water tower. All he needed to do now was wait for his adversary to catch up.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Perhaps it was due to the fact that she was fighting in earnest, but Smellerbee liked locking blades with Mai a lot more than she had when "fending off" Zuko.

She swung one leg out behind her in a wide arc for support, the soles of her boots scraping the ragged, porous surface of the roof. Mai flicked a pair of knives at her, dashing to the side at the same time; Smellerbee deflected both with Jet's swords, then pushed off the ground, flipping over Mai, hooking her by the robes. Landing, grunting, Smellerbee hauled the blades back over her head; she heard the knife-thrower hit, hard, the impact jarring up her wrists and elbows. Mai grunted, but rolled to her feet, hurling a kunai at Smellerbee. She dodged, but the miniature blade nipped Smellerbee's side, ripping through her shirt and splitting the skin just enough for a pin-point stinging sensation to buzz. Dammit! She hissed, it'd sting, probably scar if it had gone deep enough…but scars weren't things to be ashamed of, really. They were marks of pride.

Smellerbee juked left and windmilled Jet's swords around her body, twin, razor-sharp circles of quicksilver shimmering against the steel-colored clouds rolling overhead. Ducking down, she weaved an arcing path along the stone, kicking up dust each time her feet left the ground; Mai backstepped and flung two more kunai, but the Freedom Fighter brought the swords out in front of her and deflected them and quite suddenly the distance between them had closed. Smellerbee felt herself grinning - wild, savage, but _alive_, her pulse throbbing in her neck, her wrists, her chest. Her hair whipped around her head although no breeze rose from the ground to brush it, and from beneath her headband she saw shock on Mai's face, good, Smellerbee had finally wiped that apathetic expression away.

The moment stalled - all Smellerbee needed to do was bring Jet's swords down onto Mai's shoulders and she'd be out of action for a _long_ time, if she didn't die from blood loss. Zuko be damned (it didn't take much to remind the Freedom Fighter that her trust in the Fire Prince was thin and frail like old parchment on a dry day), he was gone by now and achieving the penultimate part of their little plan and Mai had never been part of their agreement, held down by any involvement with Jet's murder. She was just another enemy trying to steal life from her, from Longshot, from so many warriors, innocents and she'd get what she had coming -

The swordswoman swung with all her might, but Mai's expression of shock shifted to one of grim determination at the last second, and Jet's swords stopped short of their target with a spray of sparks, tails of gold and yellow erupting as metal clashed with metal. In each hand, Mai clenched throwing knives with slightly longer grips and blades, enough the difference enough for them to serve as actual daggers if the need arose.

They had. Her grip on the blades remained firm, and Smellerbee snarled, increasing the pressure as she assaulted the girl - their arms trembled with the combined force, and at last their blades slid apart with an echoing, grating sound. Smellerbee whirled around, compensating for the loss of the opening by bringing the sword in her right hand up to bear, catching part of Mai's robes and tugging, the sound of tearing fabric registered at the rear of Smellerbee's mind. The blow didn't connect with anything substantial enough, and she tore the blade free, opening a sizeable gash in the Fire Nation girl's clothes. Mai twisted, hurled a kunai with more power than accuracy; it zinged past Smellerbee's head, she felt the breeze whistle past, and the swordswoman caught a glimpse of pale skin the same porcelain tone as Longshot's amongst the flowing red and maroon.

The Freedom Fighter couldn't waste any opening now. She dropped down and hooked Mai's ankle with one of the swords, dragging her off her feet; she landed, rolled, and pressed her stomach flat against the stone, her larger stilettos clattering to the ground, vulnerable, but just out of reach. Smellerbee interlocked the hooks of Jet's swords and tossed the right one into the air, pivoting the left around to start swinging it, like a glimmering, razor-edged mace. It parted the air with heavy, low strokes, a deep_ whooshing_ sound accompanied by the shrill whistle of metal scraping against metal. Grunting, Smellerbee swung the held sword down, the crescent moon hand guard of the other sword arcing downward at the prone knife-thrower. Gasping, Mai rolled out of the way, and the sword bit into the stone roof, kicking up tiny pebbles so small as to almost be called dust.

Smellerbee tugged the extended sword free and brought it in close, swinging it around her body. She charged at the Fire Nation girl, who dropped back into a crouch and lashed out with a low kick that caught the swordswoman's ankles - the impact was dull, it didn't hurt really, but it was enough, root broken, she fell backwards, the swords parting, recover recover _recover_ -

Planting her free hand into the rough stone below, Smellerbee vaulted herself up, over and back down into a crouch. Jet's other sword clattered to the roof with a bell-rattle clang, and Mai threw one of the bigger knives and Smellerbee wasn't ready to _dodge_ -

"GAH!"

She shifted at the last moment, the blade nestling itself deep into her right shoulder - the same one that had been dislocated. Already warm, sticky, wet heat swelled up beneath her clothes, and white-hot fire roared anew, reinvigorated after resetting the joint had quelled it. She landed in a crouch and resisted the urge to bring her left hand up - instinct told her to drop Jet's swords and clutch at the wound, but the blade had struck too far back and it would leave her disarmed.

"Well, I guess that's the end of that," Mai said, clambering to her feet and dusting off the only intact knee on her robes - the earlier tear had ripped a jagged hole through the other. "Not too bad. I haven't gotten to go full-bore like that in a while."

"Hff. You ain't so shabby yourself." Smellerbee grinned in spite of the pain, and she could feel her lips curling because of it, transforming into something feral, something - beyond just being a warrior. The fight had been one thing, but even footing eluded her now; she wasn't sure how well her right hand would operate with a knife sticking out of the damn shoulder. It was in tight spots like this, she realized, that a more animalistic side emerged in her - like the Smellerbee of Back Then, fighting like a cornered, pissed-off cat, like Jet had her do on rainy days because he knew she hated them. This fight wasn't finished by - well - a long shot.

Mai's expression had melted back into one of disinterest, although she did not take her focus away from the Freedom Fighter. "I can see you really _are_ worth all the trouble you've been causing. Maybe Azula was right. Maybe you _do_ have potential. Looks like the only thing she and that wanted poster were wrong about was the fact that you're really a girl."

Smellerbee felt herself bristling, the hair on the nape of her neck rising; a familiar, burbling pool of lava began to rise up from the depths of her stomach, onset by years of - of shame, of low self-confidence, because she didn't look or _act_ like a girl. There had been a time when that sensation was debilitating (it hadn't been too far back, and yet, it transcended a lifetime), but she was a different person now! Store the rage, ensnare the renegade feelings, _capitalize_ on them! She pulled that fury in, embraced it, kept it close, because - because she was _proud_ of herself, and Longshot was proud of her, and he loved her even though she only met the base requirements of a female.

Before she could build and build and build on that which she'd already established - because she _would_ have and that would just have made her stronger, given her more fire for this battle, to make up for her new handicap - a dry, crunching noise (like stout, sturdy skunk bear bones being smashed open between rocks to drain the marrow) roared outward, rearing up from a near building and hurling itself into the sky. Thunderous enough to wake a heavy sleeper in the North Pole from here, Smellerbee (and Mai) found their attention drawn as a watertower stationed on a nearby building shattered, crumbled, spilling its sloshing, stale contents across the roof, down into the street, a focused deluge turning dried stone slick, tan-brick umber.

As the watertower all but disintegrated, Smellerbee caught glimpses of arrows - _lots_ of them, Longshot must have emptied his quiver or come dangerously close to it - lodged into various support posts and weak points, and realized that this had been the _true_ opening, that Longshot, doing whatever he'd been doing, had provided the perfect opportunity.

Her rage hadn't peaked, but it was enough; she took it in hand, an invisible (yet _tangible_) ball of magma, drew a deep, hot breath into her nostrils, and her left arm moved so fast as to be a blue, silver and yellow blur set against the downcast sky.

Mai didn't see it coming until the last second. She dived, but the pommel of Jet's sword buried itself deep into her side, forcing her to yelp and collapse in a heap on her side. Smellerbee heard her impact against the roof of the store, light - almost nihilistic, like her attitude - but there was a surprising solidity to it as well, reminding the Freedom Fighter that the Fire Nation girl was at least _something_ like a human being. How close, exactly, she didn't know...but she never had intended to find out from the start, hadn't she?

Clambering up to her feet - her strength already fading, just so _exhausted_ by this entire day that had not even come close to ending - Smellerbee limped over to the fallen Fire Nation girl, realizing only distantly a stiffness that had made itself present in her left ankle, where Mai had kicked her. She tried to suppress the flare-ups in her right shoulder, not bothering to dislodge the blade until she could get bandaged up properly. Spirits, let this trial be _over_ now...let Longshot be okay, and let the Fire Prince - Zuko - Lee - have opened the bridge for them to pass.

_Please._

As the adrenaline rush passed, Smellerbee became more aware of the unique scent of burning rock wafting up into the air; while Zuko's fireball had successfully pierced the roof of the store as planned, shattering through the earthen cover and spraying shrapnel every which way, it generated that Spirits-awful, chalkystench that permeated the air in any village the Fire Nation had sundered, a curdling odor that made her nostrils flare in stark disagreement. Geh. It was _foul_. Smoke rose up from the hole in billowing clouds - some of the rotted food inside had been set aflame for added conviction - a small touch Longshot had thought up. So mingled in with the scent of burning rock came burnt vegetables, overcooked and rotten meats, and more of the like. It curdled together, making a terrible brew that rose up into the sky marked by a sickly, wriggly black cloud that reached upward.

Mai was still conscious by the time Smellerbee reached her, but her eyes had gone distant. She wouldn't die from the wound, so long as she got treated with _some_ degree of promptness, but that sort of care would have to come from the hands of another. It was time to go and she wasn't going to leave Jet's sword stuck in the knifethrower out of some degree of sympathy. Kneeling down, Smellerbee wrapped her fingers around the still-too-large leather grip and clenched her teeth.

"This is gonna hurt like a bitch," she warned, although not entirely sure why. The watertower's collapse left a dull ringing in her ears and there had been no sound since Mai hit the ground. Maybe hearing her own voice would help to fill the awkward void that had followed. (After all, filling her _own _silences by speaking did nothing more than bring her own sanity into question, and experience taught her that it didn't make anyone _else_ feel dumb or misunderstood, and murmuring was a healthy way of letting out excess emotions. Kinda handy, really.)

Mai moved her eyes slowly in the Freedom Fighter's direction before they vacated again, and Smellerbee shook her head, a weary grin on her face. "I think if the circumstances were any different I'd stay and help you a little more. You were a fun sparring partner. But I'm in a rush, so..."

Sweat had settled on her palms, she realized, soaking through the fabric of her gloves; readjusting her grip (with the left hand, using the right would just agitate her shoulder wound more) so that it would rely more on her fingers, Smellerbee tugged the sword free.

Mai's robes, dark and beautiful in a gothic sort of way, had hid the spreading pool of blood while the sword remained in her side, keeping it from flowing too freely; now, without anything to stop it, dark maroon began to seep out more liberally. It'd smear across her belly first because of her position, then it would pool below her, a slick, glimmering dark circle atop the stone rooftop. A miniature-scale version of Longshot's handiwork with the water tower.

Smellerbee knew that an untreated wound of that size would give Mai plenty of time to be saved. Whether that would actually happen or not...and why the hell she actually _cared_...she didn't know. Didn't _care_ to know. Sheathing the sword, not bothering to wipe the pommel clean, she turned, the warm air caressing her cheek, and went to retrieve the other one -

But her knees, something struck the back of her _knees_, and she stumbled. Before she could actually fall her assailant grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged her back into a standing position. She cried out, she had _never_ been grabbed by the hair before and it _hurt _and it was such a cattish thing to do and then a hot gauntlet, black with maroon trim, appeared from the corner of her vision, clamping down under her jaw, forcing her head back.

That armor. _Azula_.

"Quite a show, Crimson-Faced Smellerbee." That same taunting, teasing voice from the building in uphill Omashu writhed beside her ear, and - even though she couldn't _see_ the Fire Princess - she felt her lips twisting into a crooked, passive-evil smirk, her yellow eyes glistening like freshly-polished knives. "I have to admit, I'm both impressed _and_ surprised. I've known Mai for years, she's no push-over."

Smellerbee found herself struggling with Azula's words - they just, they didn't make sense, the tone and what was being said didn't fit with the context of what was happening. The Fire Princess - she wasn't angry, but that wasn't wrong because she knew people could keep a cool head even in a dire situation like this, Longshot was the epitome of that kind of power (because it _was_ power, being able to see things straight when the world went crooked). But Azula's voice was - _droll_. Like she was making idle conversation about the weather with an acquaintance. She didn't - didn't care that her friend (who may have been Fire Nation and trying to kill Smellerbee at one point but had been neutralized and the Freedom Fighter didn't really need to do anything more about it) laid in a crumpled heap just behind her, soon to be framed by a pool of dark crimson lifeblood that spilt from her own body and - and -

She truly _was_ a witch with a cruel heart.

Smellerbee felt a distant pang of sympathy for Mai and Ty Lee. They - they were probably dispensable in Azula's eyes. But most important was - getting out now, surviving -

Azula must have sensed her desperation mounting and wrapped one leg around Smellerbee's, locking her more thoroughly. She released her vicegrip on Smellerbee's hair (scalp tingled, like being engorged on by fat, bloated flea-ticks) and, too suddenly, the throbbing pains in her shoulder screeched (or did she _herself_ screech?_)_ and the world went white white white so _hot_, before fading back to its normal colors. Her breath came tight and short from her lungs, each one wrenched free with so much, too much struggle.

"Like it?" Azula said, her voice remaining level, yet still somehow teasing. "It's a fantastic method of torture, and I should thank Mai for getting it started for me. Simply stab your captive, and - if that's not enough to make them talk - push the knife, dagger, sword - what have you - in a little further. Apply a little Firebending at the same time, just enough to heat the sword's blade, and...well, see for yourself!"

Again the whiteness overcame her and she was blind to _everything _and and she couldn't hear but her throat _hurt,_ she must be screaming but she couldn't perceive anything beyond her shoulder just _erupting_ -

And back, Smellerbee collapsed against Azula's body, gasping, panting, vision gone fuzzy again (and again and again). Her ears didn't - didn't want to work right and all she could smell was the scent of - cooking meat, not the dilapidated store from below that only roasted for show, but her own skin, her muscles, her _flesh_ being scorched -

Azula smacked her up the side of her head, and the Freedom Fighter realized distantly that the Fire Princess was speaking to her. Through the thick cotton drawn across her ears, she focused - tried to listen - and at last picked up:

"Wasn't that _fun?_ I don't know about you, but I could keep playing this game all day."

Smellerbee shuddered. She drew a breath - weak, shuddering, reedy - and when she exhaled, she could taste copper. Blood.

Damn.


	8. Chapter 4

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Chapter 4: Remember, the world ends with you...**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte, and this chapter's cover can be found here:

sioute(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/WWF-5-4-150283161

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Her first scream was what woke him up.

His - he couldn't think of a place where he _didn't_ hurt. Did everything still work - ? Arms, yes, legs, yes. No pain large enough to mean dislocation or broken bones. Good. But enough wood had collapsed around him that escaping felt like, like - an impossibility, almost. A heavy crossbeam laid across his stomach, and more wood had piled up over the top, enclosing him - trapping him. It was Lake Laogai, or that cave in the swamp, all over again. Longshot couldn't shake the sensation that, if he didn't stop winding up trapped in enclosed places like this, he'd develop latent claustrophobia. While the rational part of his mind reasoned that away as an impossibility, that very same rationality had become minimized as panic reared up to take over.

Couldn't - couldn't get out. Trapped under the water tower's remains. And Smellerbee had _screamed_ - not just a yelp or a cry, something had hurt her, really _hurt_ her, and he was - was _helpless_ -

_No_! Not helpless, not _ever_! He had taught been that years ago, had realized his gift - apples instead of arrows, yes, but never, ever helpless! Longshot grit his teeth, and felt an old sensation flooding him - familiar, but old. Courage replaced the fear, determination replaced the paralyzing helplessness; he moved his arms down, around some detritus, and finally under the cross beam holding him down. Smellerbee - _needed_ - him - dammit -

(_If he couldn't muster the strength to save her now, then_)

Jet.

Standing there, at night, the head of the table, a smirk on his face, a cup in his hand - he posed, he showboated, his wheat stalk bobbed and defied their oppressors. This feeling of action, of being invincible, of being able to lift boulders (or cross-beams) with his bare hands, that was a Jet thing to impart, whenever he spoke he was so full of charisma and words, words Longshot didn't have use for, and those words helped shape him, all the Freedom Fighters -

(_Save her if you love her_)

Ty Lee laid unconscious nearby. Longshot couldn't tell how wounded she was, exactly; it had mattered before, but now - well, there was somebody much more important he needed to worry about. Concern, respect, even a marginal admiration; he had all of these things for the enigmatic, cheerful Fire Nation girl, but he didn't love her.

Gritting his teeth (he was not as strong as Sneers or Pipsqueak but archery required so much upper-body strength that he outranked many other Freedom Fighters in that regard) and fueled by the haunting scream he had woken up to (fire roared in his veins for once, not ice, not cold - this time, the ice wouldn't be able to help him, he needed a rapid heart rate and muscles that could move quickly and powerfully, he needed to _do_, to take the incentive), he planted his palms beneath the beam, hoisted, and he could slip out, he was free, the stone beneath him slick, his clothes drenched, but that wasn't important, he could move, he could get out and _help_ -

Smellerbee screamed again, this one louder than before. Longshot reached for his bow - wasn't there, wasn't at his side where it was supposed to be - scanned, found it lying not too far away, unharmed from the untimely collapse -

His quiver had gone missing. Probably just as well, he'd run out of arrows setting up this booby trap, but one beam nearby had survived the crash mostly intact, and five arrows remained lodged into the warped splits; he yanked them all out as quickly as he could, and moved to find an opening - some kind, any kind - just _move_, _act_, there wasn't any time to think -

"Archer!" The coy voice of the Fire Princess called out, he could hear her through the wreckage. "I've got your girlfriend. She's a lovely little specimen, if not a bit on the ugly side...what you've been hearing is a superheated knife being jabbed into her shoulder. Show yourself and I may be disinclined to let her go unharmed! But if not...well, I make no guarantees that my hand won't _slip_."

Longshot tuned her out. She'd make good on her promise (she said it with too much conviction to be just a threat) and he couldn't keep this blood-of-fire thing going anymore. The time for action was over; now frozen, wintry technique had to settle back into place, and it already felt more - more natural, his fear for Smellerbee's safety residing far more comfortably here, amongst the ice floes.

The water tower had collapsed in such a way that it formed a miniature dome; planks and beams of wood parted in some sections, letting flecks of light shine through, illuminating the space at a sparse minimum. That was alright. It left him with more than he needed. Gauging where Azula's voice had come from, the archer turned and walked to the opposite end of the dome - found some detritus loose enough to slide out of place, opening a wide-enough gap for him to shimmy through, the wood catching on his soaked tunic and threatening to crush his hat. Outside! He was outside, the sun still hidden behind the canopy of steel gray clouds. His clothing clung far too close to his body, making each step...uncomfortable, but he had to be fast, he had to be -

The rubble began to slant off, and Longshot crouched to hide behind it. He could see Smellerbee, still standing on the same rooftop as before - a form laid crumpled nearby (Mai? It had to be, she wore the same flowing, dark robes and had the same raven-colored hair). Behind and partially entwined with Smellerbee, stood Azula, one arm tucked under Bee's jaw, one leg wrapped around the same one on the Freedom Fighter. Pinned as such, she couldn't reach for the sword or dagger strapped to her body, and couldn't lash out with a kick.

Longshot nocked an arrow and took steady aim, setting his mouth into a slim line. The tip of his arrow lined up gradually with his combined target, and...he hesitated in taking the shot.

He - he had pulled this move so many times growing up. He had saved Jet's life the exact same way using an _apple_, which was far less wieldy and accurate than an arrow. Sometimes, an enemy soldier would just get the drop on a Freedom Fighter and think they could out-wrangle them. The occasion would rear up where he needed to save their sorry butts, and because the Fire Nation's soldiers tended to be combative morons, they never guarded themselves from ranged attacks - and, indeed, never seemed to _expect_ them.

Azula was an entirely different matter.

She _knew_ Longshot was still out there, first of all, so that made the element of surprise all but nil. Second, she had either known or correctly assumed he would be near the wrecked water tower, and poised Smellerbee so acutely between herself and the tower that all Longshot could see of the Princess was the exposed-yet-armored arm and leg (as well as part of her topknot). Third and worst of all, if Azula avoided any shots he made properly, he would either wind up piercing Smellerbee's knee or throat - and neither a resounding injury like that, nor the manslaughter of his leader/best friend/girlfriend, instilled confidence within Longshot.

Azula _would_ move if he fired. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind. Cruel and twisted, a demon incarnate (because there was no other way to _explain_ her), Azula had outsmarted the Freedom Fighters.

Eyes narrowing, the air rank with the burnt-chalk odor of singed stone, Longshot scowled and dropped his precious bow to the ground, emerging from his hiding spot with his arms straight by his side.

"Ahh, good," Azula crooned, removing herself from behind Smellerbee enough so he could see her face. A crooked grin twisted into existence across her jaw, and a light, nauseating burble began forming within him. "It's been ages."

He kept his teeth clenched tightly, kept silent, because speaking would be the same as openly admitting defeat to this psychotic Firebender. It would probably only give her pleasure.

"Cat got your tongue?" Azula asked, her tone a faux play of being conversational and bored. In her grasp, Smellerbee struggled to remain upright; blood dribbled down her chin, and she pitched as if ready to lose consciousness. (In the back of his mind, Longshot realized how she must have been tired of it, it would be the fourth time it happened today.) He could see her eyes so acutely...they drifted in and out of focus, and for once he wished he didn't have so much experience in reading body language. What Azula had claimed to have done _sounded_ atrocious, but only in seeing his - a bitter, burning sensation began to churn in his gut - _girlfriend_ in such a state of disrepair did he realize exactly the depths of her ruthlessness. "Oh well, it hardly matters, one way or the other. I'll be sure to have as much fun with the two of you as possible, believe me."

She forged on, knowing she hadn't yet elicited his ire - gotten enough of a rise out of him to get him to _say_ anything. Longshot could tell. This was just a perverted game to the Fire Princess; with Zuko gone and Mai and Ty Lee out of commission, she had no allies, and she was playing the only card she had left in the meanwhile.

"I think you'll have it easy, at first," she continued. "_You_ would just be tied up. Sure, complete immobility is pretty bad when you think about it, but compared to what I'd be doing to _her_..." Azula flexed the arm around Smellerbee's neck; the younger Freedom Fighter let a heavy, throaty mixture of a cough and a choke escape her lips, a mist of red spraying out into the air before vanishing. "Well, you'd be forced to watch every delicious minute of that. And I wouldn't stop, I don't think, until I either got you to talk, or killed her. Whichever comes first." She narrowed her eyes, and that twisted smirk became even more devilish. "And once one or the other had been accomplished, I'd set you free...after putting your eyes out. The last thing you'd ever see is your precious little tomboy broken and under my grasp."

So _cold_. Her voice inflected no real emotion - even though she put up a convincing civility to her monologue, it was still too inhuman, too unnatural, too out of context to be genuine. Longshot had understood the Fire Princess to be cruel, but that was only the start of things. In just the span of a few minutes, Azula had proven herself not only cold-hearted, but genuinely psychotic; she was a true sadist, taking pleasure from inciting fear in or causing harm to others. She stood as the epitome of what the Fire Nation strove for, what they did to achieve their goals. It gave Longshot the frightening mental image of those skull-faced soldiers invading, destroying, sundering village after village, town after town, lined up in perfect rows organized by colonels and generals in charge of battalions and squads and just endless miles of troops. If each one of those soldiers were to remove their face plates, Longshot imagined that underneath, they _all_ bore expressions identical to Azula's. The world would be better off without her.

That last thought - it came to him so suddenly and with such sincerity that it took him by surprise.

Azula needed to die.

It wasn't Jet speaking to him from beyond the grave. It wasn't the old Longshot who would have killed Azula if only for her import to the enemy (or even just _being_ part of the enemy). A glacier began to crest inside him, overcoming the urge to feel sick, as he realized that - even now - Azula was, is and would always be a threat, so long as she drew breath and Bent fire. This idea came _exclusively_ to Longshot-of-the-Contemporary, and very suddenly he found himself wishing he had his bow back in his hand, flexing his fingers instinctively.

The Fire Princess waited - trying to see if she could goad _anything_ verbal from the archer, he knew it. This was a mind game, a sick one conducted by a wicked mastermind, and if the bitch intended to break Longshot's resolve, she had a long wait coming.

"Ah well, it was fun while it lasted," Azula shrugged. "Just hold still for a second, 'kay? I owe your friend here one last good shot for Mai - "

Longshot lunged for his bow at the same time Azula raised her palm up into the air - but before he could even reach it, two blurs of peppered dark brown shot up onto the roof, plowing through Azula and sending her careening down into the streets.

Fletcher and Surestance - how the hell had they gotten free, found them, saved them like that? - croaked in loud disapproval of the dispatched Fire Princess. Surestance moved in to prop up Smellerbee as the girl wobbled and fell forward; she was out of sight, but Longshot could see her legs from between Surestance's - bent but not so that she was kneeling. Good - good. She could hold herself up at least. Relief came to him - knocked on his door - but he could only nod and acknowledge its presence now, couldn't let it enter until they had escaped Omashu and left it behind for good. Any peaking curiosity he had about the ostrich horses and his increased surprise at how smart they were would have to be put aside.

Picking up his bow, Longshot ran and leapt over the gap separating the buildings.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

The archer had to wear Jet's swords; Smellerbee couldn't ride Surestance with them strapped to her, she didn't have the strength for it after the encounter with Azula and Mai. The weight of the swords hadn't been remarkable for the entire trip back to Omashu's gate, like it had when doubt seeped in near the end of his hostilities towards Zuko, but just like that time in Ba Sing Se, he only carried the swords in order to preserve them, not to use them. Somehow, the weapons seemed to understand, and they let Longshot be the one to holster them in Bee's place.

After a brisk trip devoid of attack, the Freedom Fighters - Longshot sore all over and more awake than he'd like to be, Smellerbee more gravely wounded and holding onto the reins only by matter of virtue - managed to reach Omashu's gates, where they met the young Fire Prince Zuko, who kept his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

"Took you long enough," he murmured, his voice low and difficult for Longshot to listen to. In response, the archer simply narrowed his eyes; it wasn't like they hadn't had their share of trouble, and it wasn't at _all_ like Zuko had aided them in the handicapped battle against his crazy sister and her friends. Instead of choosing a single path and sticking to it, he kept himself standing at the crossroads peering left and right, wondering which way he ought to turn. And most maddening of all was that the urge to say any of this - to _verbalize_ it - took all his willpower to suppress.

"Well, listen. I told all the troops on the bridge that you had been spotted in the business district near the water tower and their help was needed by my order." Zuko glanced to the right, the scarred side of his face now the most prominent. "Azula hates me enough to think that I made a mistake sooner than I did it intentionally. At least, I hope so." He shifted his weight, and Longshot saw the muscles in his jaw tightening. Was he nervous...? "The odd thing is - as soon as the bridge was clear, those two ostrich horses appeared from that ridge and stormed on through. If I didn't know better..."

Huh. Go figure; maybe stealing Surestance and Fletcher had been more than necessity, then. The Freedom Fighters _had_ grown fond of the two beasts, and Longshot placed a hand on the downy, lumpy skull of his own steed. Maybe it had been fate - the Spirits pulling the appropriate strings to put both pairs of man and beast in the right place at the right time.

"In any case, now's your chance to get out of here," Zuko concluded, his head craning up - Longshot met his gaze to see that he was staring at the statue of his father, the intimidating and cold-hearted Fire Lord Ozai. Leaving the city, here, now - the statue no longer imbued the power of irrational fear. Longshot had been inside, had experienced that fear, and overcome the insurmountable odds with Smellerbee at his side.

"Lee."

The sound of Smellerbee's voice - so hushed that it threatened to be swallowed up by the canyon spanning out beneath them - caused Longshot to hike his eyebrows and glance at the swordswoman. She forced herself to sit as upright as she could, her complexion pale and a glimmering, dagger-like gaze in her eyes despite her exhaustion.

The archer realized that she had captured Zuko's rapt attention as well, and could have smiled at the magic she held.

"The next time we see you," Smellerbee whispered, "if you don't have your act together, we _will _be enemies. We _will_ kill you."

Zuko squared his shoulders in response, his golden eyes glinting as the sun finally began to pierce through the woolly, gray cloud cover. "I hope that by then I've made the right choice, then."

"Yeah," she said, tugging on Surestance's reins. "You better."

The ostrich horses took off, and the Freedom Fighters left Omashu behind them.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

When the hills unfurled and trees began to swallow up the spires of Omashu, Smellerbee urged Surestance to a steady trot, then to a full halt. Longshot and Fletcher came to a gradual stop shortly ahead of them, and the archer turned towards her with concern etched on his pointed face like a wood carving.

Smellerbee let a slow, hard breath out. Everything just _ached_ so much, and the pain in her shoulder had eased from thunderous to ringing...but the blade still - still stuck out. The hot-and-wet-and-sticky seeping around the wound, clinging to her clothes and armor, had changed to being warm-and-dry-and-sticky; the gash had stopped bleeding for now. Normally that was a, a good thing, but - Azula had burned her from the _inside_, and what if she'd been cauterized unintentionally because of that? That would lead to infection. She could lose the full use of that arm, or lose the arm entirely -

The stench of burning rock lingered in her nostrils, even though the woods closing in on the Freedom Fighters imbued them with the scent of pine and clean air. Exhausted, aching, Smellerbee pulled one leg free from Surestance's stirrups and slipped down the opposite side, stumbling down to the grassy ground and landing on her hands and knees. Surestance, sensing something wrong (the creature was just so _smart_), lowered its massive head and nuzzled its beak to Smellerbee's cheek, the down around its eyes tickling the Freedom Fighter's temple. Smellerbee gave a small sigh and reached her arm around to pat its head and scratch it; it croaked affectionately in response, and the Freedom Fighter felt a grin struggling to break out on her lips.

Longshot was beside her before she could register it; they needed to pull that knife out, to gauge how bad, exactly, the damage was. He apologized - for not getting to her side, for having to surrender like he had - and suddenly he went silent, clamping down on his thoughts before he boiled over.

"It's okay," Smellerbee whispered, watching her chest plate fall free as Longshot undid the straps at her back. For the second time this day, she found herself helping him get her shirt off, and smirked at the irony presented by the extenuating circumstances. She shrugged out of the left sleeve and he helped to peel it off from around her head, her blood-soaked shoulder, and her right arm. The cloth tugged at the exposed parts of her skin, caught for a moment on the widest point of Mai's kunai, and then came free, tossed so that it draped over Surestance's saddle.

Smellerbee glanced down. A little curve of dark scarlet appeared at the edge of the wrappings for her chest, and Longshot only confirmed what she'd thought: enough blood had flown to soak the undergarments. This elicited a light, hissing laugh from the swordswoman, who tossed her head back and grimaced as a sharp pain lanced her chest.

"You said you believed in an Irony Spirit, right?" She asked, and he nodded in return. "I think she's standing over us right now."

He smiled as he worked to cut through the wrappings with Smellerbee's knife. (There wouldn't be any salvage for the article, but the Freedom Fighter didn't much care. The day she mourned the loss of underwear was the day she no longer belched after meals.)

The archer moved to Fletcher's pack and burrowed around inside until he came up with some of the items he'd need; Smellerbee saw him withdraw a flask of cheap Earth Kingdom whiskey, a pouch of salve, a roll of bandages, a tiny needle and a spool of thread. His boots crunching the blades of grass beneath them, he positioned himself behind her once more and warned her of the upcoming pain.

"Before you do that," Smellerbee interjected, "because I don't know if I can keep awake when it happens - earlier today. In the basement. You...hesitated."

Longshot paused, frowned, and nodded. Where was she going with this?

"No, it's not a big deal," she said, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath through her nose. "You're not ready yet...are you?"

Silence; mulling over the right answer, turning it over and over in his head, at last he came up with something he felt would do justice to what he meant. Yes, he wasn't ready yet...but it wasn't Smellerbee's fault. He still loved her, he did with every ounce of his being, but something like that, he just didn't know if he could live up to it or not. He hoped, passionately, that she would wait for him and continue to love him at the same time.

Smellerbee felt a smile crossing her face, and she lowered her head. "Of course, you big dope. I'm perfectly okay with that. You'll tell me when the time's right."

Good. Okay, good. He smiled, nodded, and pulled the blade free.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

_That evening_

Smellerbee flopped over onto the wooden table and groaned. The plateware jumped on the impact, clattering and threatening to fall over; Longshot darted one hand out and caught a plate that wobbled precariously on the table's edge, plucking it out and setting it back into its proper place. Smellerbee only noticed it peripherally, pressing one hand into her cheek while the other clutched at clumps of her hair out of frustration.

"I'm sorry, Longshot. That was just a waste of time." The rough wood caught on the stitching of her sleeves as she shifted, burying her head in her arm. Voice muffled, she added, "We shouldn't have gone into Omashu."

She felt Longshot's hand rest on her forearm, fingers squeezing gently, and felt a little more comforted - but the safety provided by keeping her eyes in this darkness kept her from raising her head. It was like being asleep here - no requirements other than taking care of your body, no need to meet somebody's ludicrous standards...okay, so the standards had been set by _herself_, but all the same. She didn't need to expect so much from herself while asleep.

Why the hell were Jet's boots so big to fill? It wasn't fair.

"Hey, kids. What's the matter? Looks like you two got trampled by a stampede of horse lions."

Smellerbee scowled. Okay, so a tea shop on the edge of a derelict town: also not a smart place to go (if you want to be left alone, that is). At least this one wouldn't - shouldn't - land her and Longshot way over their heads in trouble - but that was just the rational part of her brain. The rest of her countered with a guttural _'Shut up, you,'_ and she erred in favor of that. Swinging her head up out of the comfort of the darkness, she glanced upwards at the speaker, a tall, thin man wearing green and brown robes. With short, mussed, charcoal-colored hair and a jaw covered in stubble, the man kept one fist planted on his hip and his other arm lax at his side. Smellerbee felt her eyes drawn to his face, though; he wore dark spectacles over the bridge of his nose, the ovular lenses riding low on his face, obscuring his cheek bones. Not a lot of people had spectacles; it was mostly a luxury reserved for the wealthy, and if you had faulty vision and couldn't afford some, well, you just had to deal with it. So seeing this scruffy so-and-so in a humble tea shop wearing some had caught her off guard; after clearing her throat, she nodded and said, "Something like that."

"It's not often we get too many adventurers out in these parts," the man with the headgear said, sticking one hand in his pocket and quirking his head to one side. "Judging from your look and the smell of burning clothes, you must've come from Omashu."

Smellerbee pulled a face and murmured, "Can we just place an order?"

The man laughed, a pure, robust sound ringing out throughout the tea shop. "That's okay, we don't need to talk about it. What can I getcha? We got a wide variety of teas from around the world, including a few house specials. A couple extra copper pieces will getcha your first experience with a cuppa, something I'm sure you're gonna remember for a long time."

"What's...what's a 'cuppa?'"

"It's a trip, I'll tell you that much." At Smellerbee's annoyed glance, the man chuckled and smirked, adding, "You can call it my own unique concoction, involving a special kind of beans. I'm thinking of calling it 'coffee,' but I don't know if the name will catch on or not. I'd like to make a franchise outta the stuff, if I can."

Smellerbee stole a quick glance to Longshot, who arched an eyebrow. She saw intrigue and wariness flitting in his eyes; she could see that he wanted only a soothing drink, especially after the close brush with death at Omashu. Smellerbee could hardly blame him, but...a drink made out of beans? It sounded like something at least worth trying out. Curiosity piqued, bone-weary, sore from the day's battles, she said, "We'll get a jasmine tea for my friend, and I'll get a...a 'cuppa.'"

A grin split the man's face. "Ahh you really _are_ the adventurous type, Shaggy. You live to seize the day. I like that. One jasmine an' one cuppa, comin' up."

He turned away and vanished into the back room of the tea house.

"_'Shaggy?'_" Smellerbee echoed, keeping her voice low. She tugged at a lock of hair and gave a light frown. "Not the meanest thing I've ever been called."

Longshot gave a small shrug, his mouth curled into a light frown. Smellerbee sighed and grinned, leaning back into her chair, which squealed under her weight. "Yeah, you're right. At least it's not a lie."

Glancing around her, Smellerbee gorged herself on her surroundings; the scent of boiling leaves wafted around them, thick and musky in the air. Lamps lined the walls, hung down from the ceiling, casting everything in a balmy orange light, as if it had yielded to the warmth of the middle of the summer. With walls made of wood instead of the usual stone, and a variety of tables made of the same, the tea shop had the word "WildCat" on the sign outside, and to Smellerbee looked like a well-to-do place with very humble intentions. It didn't surprise her...this wasn't a big town, and the Fire Nation had been through it repeatedly to take any handy supplies.

She winced. Thinking about the Fire Nation made her reflect on her poor decisions as of late; did Jet ever have this much trouble wearing the role of leader? Up until the dam mission, he'd seemed...flawless, perfect, a sparkling example of everything a leader _should_ be. He had made some mistakes, yes (including the one that got her captured by a certain unit of Fire Nation troops leading a slave line through the forest), but things always worked out in the end and trying to find any faults in him to validate herself only made her feel even more incompetent. Heat rose up into her face, and she found herself slumping down - trying to make herself smaller, more insignificant.

She could feel Longshot's gaze on her, even without looking at him; ears and cheeks burning with embarrassment, she faced him, her head bowed down just a bit, masking part of him with her hair. "I'm sorry, I...just..."

He shook his head and placed a finger up to his lips. She sighed and - and, what next? The words felt jumbled behind her eyes, and before the opportunity to explain presented itself, a young girl only a little older than Smellerbee approached the table with a wooden bowl full of small rolls and breads. With hair the color of bare ground during a frosty autumn morning tied back into a long braid, she gave the pair of Freedom Fighters a friendly smile and set the bowl down between them.

"Free biscuits for you," the girl said, her green and yellow robes swishing as she moved, a white apron dangling from around her neck. She whirled and said over her shoulder, "Complimentary from the shop's owner. He's the guy that just took your order. You're lucky; he won't leave the counter for just anybody."

**SCENE DIVIDE**

The girl departed, leaving the Freedom Fighters alone; following her departure, Bee shifted her weight uncomfortably, as if she had something on the tip of her tongue before the interruption. Longshot saw Smellerbee begin to twist a lock of hair around her fingers, noticed that her lower lip disappeared as she bit into it; body language spoke well where words failed to form for the swordswoman. It was okay; Longshot clasped his hands together on the table in front of him and let his face sink into placidity. Smellerbee could take all the time she needed to put the right combination of words together; that was the flow the pair had established long ago, since she never succumbed to filling in the void of silence left between the pair when they had nothing to really talk about. Her eyes darted around, taking in their surroundings, and Longshot practically heard the churning, grinding gears inside her head working to pull together a massive puzzle where the pieces had been scattered about.

Plucking up a roll from the basket set for them (the crust dry and hard under Longshot's fingertips, little seeds flecking the bottom), the archer took a reasonably-sized bite; the inside was bitter and rich, the taste rolling across his tongue, making his eyes roll back into his skull. After the day, and after the long trip between the last city to Omashu to here where there wasn't much else aside from salted meat, bread was a true prize; maybe later, Longshot could convince Smellerbee to hunt for potatoes at the bazaar (even though she hated them). Or apples - fresh, red ones with shining skin and bursting with juices. Yes, it had been a while since he'd had a red apple. Fletcher had taken a liking to them, too - a bizarre trait that, along with her underlying intelligence, Longshot couldn't even begin to explain. What were the chances, right?

As he chewed, rolling the spongy innards of the bread across his tongue, Smellerbee found the proper words. Slumping over and propping up her head on her free arm, she asked, "Am I leading okay, Longshot? I don't think I am. Jet never seemed to screw up this much."

Was that all? Longshot felt his eyebrows arch upward in bemused curiosity, a tiny grin flitting across his face. He chewed one last time and swallowed the mouthful. That was kind of a silly question to ask. Of _course_ she was leading okay, and of _course_ there'd be some bumps in the road; that was an inevitability, especially when starting out and taking on the job full-time. In the past, she'd only ever had to lead the Freedom Fighters for a day or two - a week at most, remember? And never in situations this harried. She'd better not _dare_ compare herself to Jet and think that he was absolutely perfect, because he'd made a lot of mistakes in his lifetime. The biggest mistake was the one that killed him, after all, and he was responsible as their leader then, too.

"Yeah, but - that was Jet going off on his own that night." Smellerbee shook her head, her brow screwed up tight. "If anything, it was a display of how shitty we were as his friends and followers. I could have gotten _both _of us killed today, and then what would have happened to the war?"

Longshot took another bite of the roll and furrowed his brow. That's a tough call...well, the war certainly wouldn't have been their problem anymore, would it? Don't get him wrong, he didn't exactly have a deathwish, but dead is dead is dead and the Spirit that parted Soul from Body didn't take 'no' for an answer.

The archer held up one hand with the fingers and thumb curled inward, forming a tight ball. There was the slave line incident...then the thing with Spatula...the dam, don't forget about _that_ one...trying to recruit Lee so aggressively...not to mention the one with the exploding lobsters. For each event, Longshot extended a finger on the hand until all five digits were splayed out; he wiggled them and smirked, his thick, bushy eyebrows curved inward, yielding a soft expression. Smellerbee didn't have anything to worry about. A brush with death was just part of a Freedom Fighter's job.

At first, this drew nothing from Smellerbee; after a moment's scrutiny, however, a wide grin split her face, and she heaved a great, raspy belly-laugh that Pipsqueak would have been proud of. Throwing herself back into her chair, she tossed her head back, her shaggy mop for hair swishing. Clapping a hand over her stomach, her laughter rang out through the half-full tea shop, drawing the attention of the remaining patrons and making Longshot smile. He swallowed again and took another mouthful in order to avoid the temptation of laughing out loud as well.

"Well, it's good to see you two have cheered up a bit."

Longshot glanced upward as the scruffy man from before - the shop's owner - sidled up beside the table once more, a tray of drinks in his hand. Bee's laughter died down, her wide smile reduced to a simple, but still honest grin. "Thanks. I think this place has the right atmosphere for a good pick-me-up."

A grin twisted to life on the man's face. "I aim to please. One jasmine, one black cuppa; and tell you what, I think you guys have got my curiosity stoked." He set the tray down and reached over to an empty table, grabbing a wooden chair and dragging it over to where the Freedom Fighters sat. Settling into the creaky wooden seat, he set his elbows on the table and folded his hands in front of his chin. "I'd like to say this is the first time I've seen you, but that'd be a lie - the wanted posters in the center of town say that the Fire Nation's got a sizeable bounty on your heads."

Smellerbee beamed. "I know, isn't it cool?"

"HAHAHA!" This time, it was the shop owner's turn to laugh, and Longshot had to hide a grin. The man was some sort of good mood infection - like a disease you didn't want to get rid of, if such a thing existed. His laughter was clear, piercing and...and, inspiring, he guessed. It was hard to describe. "I figured it was a pride thing to you. So I'm gonna strike you a bargain: these old ears love hearing traveling stories, and ones involving swords, bows 'n arrows, and Firebenders are better than boring old mercantile stuff. Tell me your story, and the drinks are on the house."

Longshot glanced at Smellerbee, hiking an eyebrow. He questioned exactly how 'old' the man stood - certainly no more than his mid-thirties, and that felt too high because of his youthful spirit - but would a stranger like this really be interested in the whole tale without having any ties to the Avatar? Smellerbee shrugged in return, wordlessly; his guess was as good as hers, she figured. (A simple enough gesture wasn't so hard to read, even given how long they'd been friends.) Rolling his shoulders in response to her, she turned back to the shop owner and said, "Okay... I think we have ourselves a deal."

He grinned. "Beautiful."

Longshot quirked his head to the side once again; something about this stranger had made quick work of Bee's defenses, and Longshot would be lying if he said that he was exempt from the same. He just felt like a...a sincere, passionate, inspiring person. Like Jet had been. (Maybe _that_ was why he was so easy to get along with...no, that wasn't right, either. Huh...he'd have to think about it.) Smellerbee began to regale their story, starting with their fated meeting with the Avatar; Longshot, though, was already far ahead of her, thinking back to this morning - to the smoldering, overcast mountains of earth that had at one point in time made up one of the strongest capitals in the Earth Kingdom.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

_(Much) later_

"That's a pretty impressive tale." The shop owner leaned forward on his chair and smirked, using a finger to push his shaded spectacles up the bridge of his nose. "And I have to say, you look pretty good for a girl who was about to keel over."

"That's a story for another day," Smellerbee responded, rotating her right arm at the shoulder and _relishing_ at the lack of pain - at the ease of which the limb moved. "A lady can't give away all her secrets, now. Also, explaining it would feel too much like a _deus ex machina_."

She saw a phantom smile tugging at Longshot's mouth, hidden behind his cup of tea. The shop owner chuckled and conceded. "Fair enough, fair enough. That was a pretty nice palaver we had."

"_'Palaver?'_" Smellerbee reached for her coffee and hiked an eyebrow. The stuff tasted bitter - she'd been tugging at it for what felt like hours - but the combined, unique flavor and its soothing heat and constant supplements to her chi made it a thing of wonder, a liquid miracle that caught her entirely by surprise and made her muse at how nobody had discovered it before.

"Sorry, slip of the tongue. It means something like a meeting, a story-telling session like this." He waved his hand around in the air, indicating the table and their encounter. "You notice that, as long as your story was, it's still night outside?"

A measure of surprise overcame the swordswoman; she and Longshot glanced outside of the WildCat to see that, indeed, the sun had _not_ risen despite the length of their story and the detail of which she'd gone into it. Come to think of it...Smellerbee raised a hand up to her throat. Her voice hadn't gone hoarse - well, more hoarse than it already was - and she didn't even really feel that tired (something she had been attributing to the coffee). Both Freedom Fighters turned their attention to the shop as if to ask what the hell had happened; he shrugged in response, a grin on his face. "What can I say? This world is fulla magic, kids."

Longshot gave a slow nod. He was right on that count.

"So, what's next on the docket for you?" He asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. The stubble on his face, the mussed, dark gray hair on his head, radiated an air of youth - but for some reason, that just didn't seem _right_ to Smellerbee. His age was a deceptive thing to pin down. "You just made enemies with the meanest bitch this side of the Fire Nation, you've got prices on your heads that are only gonna go up, and you couldn't find your friends in Omashu."

Smellerbee shrugged. "We only knew where they were going after the forest - Pipsqueak and The Duke could be anywhere in the world by now. They could be dead. It...it would suck, but we vowed to move on after Jet, and this is no different, you know? Looking for 'em is a moot point. All we can do now is cut straight to the forest and meet up with our friends there. Go from there."

"Hmm." The shop owner nodded, his spectacles slipping a little down the bridge of his nose again. He met Longshot and Smellerbee's gazes in turn, his expression suddenly turned serious. "Listen to me, guys. You're absolutely right about the world's current state of affairs. If the Avatar really _is_ dead, we'll all need Freedom Fighters to cover our asses. Just don't forget that life isn't just worth living for tomorrow - but today, as well. Seize the moment. You more than anyone else I've met understand that every passing second is precious."

His inflection somber, Smellerbee felt herself caught off-guard by this strange tea shop owner once again. Where had this all come from...? And although unprovoked, she understood what he meant, breaking his gaze long enough only to look at Longshot, who sensed the movement and locked eyes with her. He looked as astounded as she did, and she felt this enigmatic man's words clicking into place as she took in Longshot's - his entirety, his pale, porcelain-skinned face, his beautiful chocolate eyes, his adorable ears, his slender shoulders, his rumpled and dirty clothing...

"The pair of you have realized something important from the events in Omashu," the shop owner continued, but Smellerbee could only listen as she absorbed Longshot further. "In dealing with the knife-thrower and the acrobat, you started to expand your boundaries. All your lives, you've been trained to respond to the Fire Nation in blacks and whites, how every one of them deserves to die just because of their blood. But only when you accept people in your life with different views do you continue to shape who you are; the time will come when you'll coexist beside Fire Nation and Firebenders. You've both made remarkable progress overcoming your past prejudices already...just be aware that there is a difference between _prejudice_ and _justice_. And remember, young Freedom Fighters...the world ends with you."

This time, the duo turned to their host, who wore a coy, knowing smirk. The chair creaked under his weight as he pushed away from it, spinning it around and sliding it back under the table the right way. "That story was so epic it knocked _me_ through a loop, so I'm gonna head back and take my half-an-hour fifteen minute break. And just like we promised, the drinks are on me this time 'round." He began to walk towards the back room of his small, well-lit shop, only to turn around and glance back at them before he could reach the doorway. "Oh...and good luck, kids."

He turned, and in a moment, vanished.

Aside from the few patrons left in the shop and the girl standing behind the front counter, the Freedom Fighters were alone.

Turning to Smellerbee, Longshot quirked an eyebrow. That guy was odd...something about him didn't fit quite right in the picture, but it wasn't...it didn't feel like a _bad_ thing. Right? That's how _he_ saw it, anyway. The shop owner struck him as an eccentric, and he obviously knew a lot more than he let on, but he seemed as harmless as a baby sabre-tooth moose lion.

"No, I agree with you," Smellerbee murmured, reaching into her sleeve and withdrawing a folded scrap of parchment. She unfurled it and laid it flat on the table, the mottled yellow and brown surface yielding a startlingly accurate calligraphy of herself, pigmented by vivid, stained watercolors - her wanted poster, filched from a signboard near the outskirts of the town. "But it seems to be a recurring pattern, tea shop owners being more than they seem..."

Which brought up another question. Longshot leaned forward and took another sip of his tea, which had remained hot throughout their story. If - in the future - the pair ever crossed paths with Zuko again, and let Longshot play Demon's Advocate for a moment and assume he actually _did_ change his ways - what would Smellerbee do? Would she still mistrust him? Would she kill him, even though he'd made the right choice?

Smellerbee folded her hands over the top of her cup, tendrils of steam rising from her coffee tracing unseen lines along her palms and fingers. She glanced down at the wooden floor beneath them and pursed her lips, her brow furrowing in thought. Would she...? Drawing a deep breath through her nose, she exhaled and said, "I...wouldn't kill him. Jet wanted a second chance. Mushi - Iroh - believed people _deserved_ second chances. Neither Jet nor Zuko ever really crossed that threshold, you know? I think I could find the patience to give him the benefit of a doubt. But I'd only trust him as far as I needed to. He'd really have to do something big to prove he wasn't his father's son."

Longshot nodded. That's pretty much what he figured. And their plan - reuniting with Sneers. That actually _did_ still stand, right?

"Yes. Yes it does." Smellerbee nodded her head, a slow, dire motion. "How we'll convince him to help us, I don't know. But I think we should consider building up a back-up force of warriors in case he doesn't. It may not be the same Freedom Fighters, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel now. We should take what we can get."

This elicited another nod from the archer. He only really had one more question, then: what if they _couldn't_ mount a massive offensive force like that?

"Then...I guess it'll be just the two of us, to the very end." Smellerbee sighed. "We'd have to be prepared to move silently. If we assassinate Fire Lord Ozai and Azula...and probably Zuko, too...we'd have to be careful about it. But that's our last-ditch effort."

Longshot's posture fell just a little bit, and Smellerbee could see the grim reality settling over him, shadows forming under his eyes. This isn't good, is it?

"...I wouldn't worry." She said, at last. "We'll persevere, one way or the other. We're too strong for anything else."

He believed her.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

_Then_

_Earlier that day_

Omashu.

Pipsqueak glanced up at the city - distant, four conical spires jutting up into the sky, which had gone gray as steel and just as cold.

He and The Duke had left Hong Ye forest following the flooding of Gaipan in an attempt to start over, trekking towards Omashu; they hadn't made it, as was their lot in life, and even though the two Freedom Fighters were just passing by as part of Hakoda's entourage, he couldn't help but feeling a little sour about it. Their second chance at life had been a wash before they could even properly start it.

"It stinks, don't it?" The giant asked, craning his head back just enough to keep from throwing The Duke off his shoulders. "We got so close."

"Yeah." The Duke sighed. "But I guess we just had other things we needed to do. Your 'spirits' and all that nonsense."

Pipsqueak chuckled. "Yeah. At least, so far as I know. You know how I am on that stuff: _'whatever will be, will be.'_"

The two Freedom Fighters fell into silence, just marching onward with the other warriors - but ahead, in the distance, Pipsqueak spotted a pair of gray-brown blurs charging for the bridge connecting Omashu to the mainland, spanning over the yawning chasm keeping out intruders. (The pit had obviously not worked when it came to the Fire Nation, though.) Pipsqueak squinted - tough to pin down what they were -

"Huh." Hakoda murmured. "Somebody's going to be missing their ostrich horses."

Yeah...Pipsqueak guessed so. The two beasts reached the bridge - bounded across - before vanishing into the city.

It wasn't their business, though. They had a date with some Earthbenders in a village east of here.

Time to move on.

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book Five: The Invasion of Omashu**

**End**


	9. Bonus Chapter 4

_**Where Words Fail**_

**Book 5: The Invasion of Omashu**

**Bonus Chapter 4: Just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems!**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

Smellerbee guessed they were lucky they found the small town where they did; Longshot, certainly no doctor, had clicked his tongue when pulling Mai's knife free from Smellerbee's shoulder. He'd spread the wound so he could pour whiskey into it, to clean it out (every part of that process hurt like a motherfucker)...it didn't look good. He could stitch the laceration, yeah, that wouldn't be a problem, but there could be some permanent muscle damage, and there was _no_ way it wouldn't get infected. Even after the fact - after the alcohol had oozed out, tracing lukewarm wormtrails down her back, after Longshot had closed the wound - her shoulder just hurt, razor-sharp, fiery pain lancing through her with every step Surestance took, and the ostrich horse wasn't going slow, either. They couldn't stay too close to Omashu.

This town was decently-sized, not too large to be called a city and not too small to be a village. There were at least a few hundred people living here, and although the architecture wasn't anything to write home about, the houses that lined the streets were in good condition. Most of these people didn't seem impoverished and probably lived on modest income, a guess that only strengthened when the pair of Freedom Fighters came across a small plaza lined with businesses, including - thank the Spirits - a doctor. In the center of the plaza sat a fountain, a wide, glistening pool with a statue of a wolf lion rearing up from the center. And even better, not a single Fire Nation soldier in sight, although they probably passed through here frequently on their way too or from Omashu. The people - the men, women and children the two Freedom Fighters passed through the streets - didn't shy away from the strangers as if burned, and they seemed happy enough...maybe, just maybe, the Fire Nation didn't bother them too much. It was a happy thought Smellerbee was more than happy to cling to as everything - this entire morning, and her freaking shoulder, how tired she was - conspired against her to knock her out.

The only reason they had to even suspect the Fire Nation came near this place were the wanted posters mounted on a signboard at the edge of the plaza. Mai had mentioned them during her fight with Smellerbee, and it had been kinda cool hearing about it, but seeing them in person - it was..._wow_. The swordswoman eased Surestance to a stop in front of the sign post (made of splintered, raw wood) and let a low, shuddering whistle out through her teeth.

"Look at this," Smellerbee murmured, beckoning Longshot over to her. The archer hiked a curious eyebrow and eased Fletcher over to her, and Smellerbee heard him grunt when he noticed the wanted posters. The calligraphy-and-watercolor representations of the two Freedom Fighters were actually pretty accurate, even down to Jet's swords on Smellerbee's back, and the ridges in Longshot's gazelke-horn bow. Smellerbee plucked hers free as gently as she could and noticed how the paper rattled in her grasp; her hand was shaking, at least partially in awe of the fact that she'd made enough of a name for herself to - to get her own wanted poster! So far as she knew, no other Freedom Fighter had gotten one; the group, before splitting, had been strictly local, sticking to the forest and valley, quick to strike and quicker to vanish. Nothing warranting one of these, this parchment-ink-paint masterpiece. The bottom of Smellerbee's promised a reward if she was caught and turned in...not a bad figure for somebody in her shoes, but definitely room for growth. She could do better than that.

"_'Wanted for crimes committed against the Fire Nation, Crimson-Faced Smellerbee.'_" Smellerbee felt a grin quirking up on her face despite the exhaustion clawing at her. She skimmed the rest of the information and felt a stippling irritation scrawl up her spine when she realized they'd gotten her gender wrong. Jerks! Everything else was alright, but they couldn't - argh!

Don't worry too much about it; she knew as well as Longshot did that sometimes it was better to be mistaken for a boy. The archer's brow knit as he reached out and pulled his own poster free; he scrutinized it for a moment before folding it and slipping it away into his tunic. He was being awful stoic about it, but Smellerbee knew him better, and could pick up the buzzing giddiness lying just out of sight. He was as excited as, if not moreso than Smellerbee about having an actual physical wanted poster of himself.

"Yeah, but I still dun like it," Smellerbee groused. She hunched her shoulders - and hissed when the left screeched at her, the stitches tugging at her skin. "In - in any case - the doctor. Yeah? Yeah."

Longshot sighed and nodded. Hopefully this wouldn't put too large a dent in their finances.

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"Who stitched you up?"

Smellerbee regarded her doctor with a curious eyebrow. He was a water tribe man - tall, in his early twenties, with mocha-colored skin and cocoa hair tied back in a bundle of dreadlocks. His jaw was rectangular, but he was incredibly skinny - not emaciated, but certainly no muscleman. He wore a blue, layered tunic and pants, and he regarded the cut on Smellerbee's shoulder with a heavy frown. The fact that somebody from the Water Tribe was in this podunk town was weird enough, but the fact that he was a doctor...? Something didn't sit quite right with the swordswoman and she couldn't place what. It slipped from her grasp like an eel - something really obvious she should know. Longshot might, but - well, it wasn't like she could ask him with the doctor in the same room, prodding at her like she was some sort of specimen in a jar.

Four stone walls rose up on all sides, and a curtain had been drawn over the door connecting this room to the reception area. Smellerbee sat perched on a cold, rocky table (her butt was way too bony for this to be comfortable), and the shutters on the windows had been drawn, affording them a modicum of privacy. Not like she needed anybody else seeing her like this today - Zuko and the doctor were enough. Still, the day was bright enough to allow light to seep through, keeping the place illuminated.

"He did." The swordswoman gestured at Longshot - and winced as he took a pair of scissors to the stitches, involuntarily tugging on them in the process. "Not bad for somebody in the field, huh?"

"Hmph. Could have fooled me...here I was thinking a drunken hog monkey had done it."

Longshot, leaning up against a wall nearby, rolled his eyes, but otherwise allowed the insult to slide off his back. Everybody was a critic.

"Alright, let's see the damage..." The doctor walked away from the table, towards the back wall; Smellerbee cast a glance over her shoulder and saw him looking for something on a shelf of what appeared to be medical supplies. Scalpels, retractors, clamps...all sorts of assorted equipment, most of which the Freedom Fighter couldn't identify, all of them appearing as horrifying as the last. She shuddered and bit her lower lip, because - ugh, this would be invasive, wouldn't it? Of course it would, the wound would get infected (already her thought process was starting to get sluggish, her mind thrummed just a little bit - the fever and delirium would barge their way in soon enough if she didn't let this jerkass do his job), and - and there could be serious, permanent damage from it...

The doctor plucked up the tools he'd needed, but Smellerbee whirled around, faced forward before she could see what atrocities he carried back with him. "You're lucky you got here when you did. The skin around the wound is starting to get enflamed, and..." he paused - Smellerbee didn't _like_ that pause - and she felt cold metal touching the outside of the wound, on either side of the laceration, opening it - hurt, made her hiss - "...well. Let's just say you're lucky and leave it at that, hmm?"

"We - Longshot washed it out with alcohol," Smellerbee explained, trying (and probably failing) to mask the desperation in her voice. (Maybe it would make a difference, maybe it'd make him leave her alone more?) "Whiskey."

"Tche." The doctor snorted. "Alright, alright...here's the deal. It's not life-threatening, but you're looking at some pretty serious damage. A lot of muscle and skin tissue has been partially cauterized - you said a Firebender stabbed you with a knife and proceeded to heat it up?"

"Yes." Smellerbee had to grit her teeth, because he was still probing the wound and _she did not care for that thank you very much._

"Fantastic story, I'm sure." The doctor's snooty indifference didn't do much to improve Smellerbee's mood. He didn't believe her - that was fine, but he didn't need to be so, so _egomaniacal_ about it. "In any case, you can expect some reduced flexibility and reaction time in the arm, and if the cauterized parts aren't removed immediately, the tissue will get necrotic and you'll be looking at a pretty serious infection that could lead to death."

Smellerbee choked, and she could see Longshot's eyes get wide, jaw drop - that was bad! Bad on all fronts, there was nothing even remotely un-bad about it! She didn't - argh - okay, so obviously the cauterized bits would have to come out. It was better than dying. But losing some motor function in the arm? Well - well, it would...this was the absolute worst time for this to happen, and she'd have to adapt, wouldn't she, oh man this would...

"Is there - " Smellerbee's voice cracked, and she coughed to clear her throat. "Is there some way we can avoid the whole fucked-up arm bit?"

The doctor clicked his tongue and pulled whatever tool he'd been prodding Smellerbee with away. "Spirits, you people...everybody comes in here expecting a miracle, but when I tell them how much my services cost, they give me the evil eye and call me a quack." The doctor stepped around the table, positioning himself between Smellerbee and Longshot. He crossed his arms over his chest, and cold, blue eyes perched above a broad nose narrowed. "You two don't look like you could afford a bath, let alone what you're asking for."

Ghhhhh. "Look, if you don't want our business - "

"I'll remove the necrotic tissue and sew you up, _if_ that's within your meager price range." The doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm a busy man, and I really don't have time to play games with you backwoods children - "

Whatever ass-hat tirade the doctor planned on continuing fell short at the sound of Earth Kingdom coin jangling against each other in the confines of a leather money pouch. Smellerbee saw his eyes light up, his ears perk at the sound - like music to him, she was sure - as he turned his attention towards Longshot, who held the bulging, mint-green money pouch up in one hand. The archer had self-control out the yin-yang, but even this man was getting under his skin, the irritation scratching chipped claws along his face, his nostrils flaring. They had money. They could afford whatever this "miracle treatment" of his was.

The doctor didn't need to be astute to understand what Longshot was conveying.

"Okay. Okay, fine." The doctor held up his hands and snorted. "If you insist on pushing your luck...thirty gold pieces."

Smellerbee choked again, and Longshot grimaced - unmasked, naked. The doctor quirked his head to the side and smirked. "If you need a few minutes to discuss it, I'll step outside."

"Get out," Smellerbee growled, because - ugh, he was worse than Sneers! She didn't need to put up with his smarmy-assed attitude. The doctor shrugged and turned around, stepping through the curtains separating this room from the lobby.

The swordswoman turned her attention to Longshot and drew a deep breath, doing her best to ignore the sharp, radiating pain from her shoulder. The archer crossed the room, plopped down on the table next to her, and drew his head in close to hers. "Well? _Can_ we afford it?"

Longshot wilted a little bit as he pulled open the money pouch; he sifted through it with two fingers and sighed, blowing the breath out in a low hiss between his teeth. Yeah, they could afford it...it would leave them with only a few silver and copper to their name, but they could afford it. Paying for whatever magic the doctor assumed he could work would mean that they'd have to make their supplies last a loooong time, unless Smellerbee felt like stopping and pulling odd jobs at every town they came across.

"Ick, no." Flashes of the job they had gotten at Ba Sing Se - working in a kitchen, scrubbing dishes until the skin on their fingers split, the smell of this awful, terrible soap they used assaulting their noses - flickered through her mind, and pulled a face. "And we have thirty gold on the nose?"

On the nose. Longshot pursed his lips. They'd done so well preserving the money he'd stolen from the fop in Ba Sing Se's Upper Ring, too...but, really, it wasn't his choice. It wasn't his arm that would lose reaction time if they didn't want to take the chance.

Smellerbee crossed her arms over her chest - winced - and snorted. "Fine, put me on the spot...okay. It's obvious enough that whatever supplies we might need on the way to the forest, we can improvise. We've gotten by on less, and I guess it's our own fault for spoiling ourselves. And..." she bit her lower lip. "...and, maybe this is selfish of me, but I _like_ being at one-hundred percent. The thought of not being able to be everything I am now...that scares me, Longshot. Is it silly to be frightened of something like that, especially now?"

No. No, it wasn't silly at all. The archer shook his head and laid a hand on her arm. The corners of his lips quirked up into a phantom's smile. Honestly, he'd rather she stay at one-hundred percent, too. They needed to be in top form if they were going to win this war.

"Right. Right, okay." Smellerbee sighed again and cleared her throat. "Let's get this over with, I guess."

**SCENE DIVIDE**

"Just relax." The doctor snorted as he reached for a clay jar the size of his head perched on the back counter. He hefted it up with a low grunt and walked it over to the table Smellerbee sat on, each step careful and planned. Whatever was in that jar was either fragile, expensive, or both. (Thirty gold made it pretty expensive, Longshot figured.) "The hard part is paying. The rest is you unwinding so I can do my job."

Longshot was proud that Smellerbee had the self-restraint to keep from snapping at the doctor. The archer liked to think he was fair-minded, and he understood that stereotypes existed for a reason...but in this case, their doctor was one of those perpetrators.

The Water Tribesman eased the lid off of the jar, clay grating against clay, and reached inside with both hands; he closed his eyes, and Longshot noticed the muscles in his forearms tensing up. He pulled his hands free, and...

Well. Longshot had half-expected something herbal, like moss, or powder, but when he spotted the quivering, inch-thick layer of clear liquid clinging to the doctor's hands, shimmering in the light, the archer put two and two together.

A Waterbender.

The doctor was a Waterbender!

Longshot was pretty culturally versed, but anybody with a lick of worldly experience knew that the Southern Water Tribe had no more Waterbenders, and that the healing arts were only taught to women in the North Pole. (What a load of crap; thirty gold for him to stick his hands in a pot of water and press them against Bee's shoulder for a minute. But they'd paid up front, and Longshot wasn't sure he had it in him to haggle down after this.) The water flared up once, glowed a brilliant, azure blue color, his hands immersed up to his wrists; with his palms flat on Smellerbee's back, he rotated them in slow circles, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. Between the doctor's fingers, he could see Smellerbee's laceration, caught little bits of dark red and black signifying the wound...but with each pass the doctor made over it, those bits got harder and harder to spot until, at last, it vanished entirely.

During the entire thing, Smellerbee's eyes had slid shut, and her mouth quirked up into a serene grin, and Longshot could only imagine how it felt. Cool, soothing, like knots in your muscles coming undone; he'd have to ask Smellerbee. It looked...blissful.

The water's glow receded, dimmed...gone, and the doctor pulled his hands away, holding them over the jar and letting the water slide free from his skin. He closed it back up, crossed his arms over his chest, and said, "_that_ is why it costs thirty gold. Who's the number one doctor in the nearby Omashu region? That's right - this guy."

Longshot snorted and rolled his eyes. Spirits, bad enough that he'd swindled them...

Smellerbee hopped down from the table and yanked her tunic back on; she turned to face the doctor and planted a hand on her hip. "I have to admit, you're pricy...but you're good."

Which was odd, given the fact that he defied all sorts of gender and cultural stereotypes. Longshot shook his head. What was the deal? (Smellerbee translated for him, of course - no chance in hell this guy would understand. He was too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice.)

"Oh, yeah. Well." The doctor cleared his throat and glanced away. "I'd been training to be a doctor anyway, up in the Northern Water Tribe. I knew I wasn't allowed to use my bending to learn the healing arts, and I was fine with that...until the Avatar and his girlfriend came and changed everything. Women are taught how to fight, men are taught the healing arts...all sorts of crap like that. I'm just naturally gifted enough to have picked up on it in that time."

"Then how come you're still not up in the North Pole?" Smellerbee asked.

Ah - the cockiness had slipped away from the Water Tribesman, and he glowered down the bridge of his nose at the swordswoman. "I think it's time for you to leave. I have other patients to see."

"Well...thanks anyway, Bubbles." Smellerbee shook out her hair and smirked.

"I - what? 'Bubbles?'"

"Yeah." Smellerbee shrugged. "Because of your bubbly personality."

"_OUT_," the doctor bellowed, thrusting a finger at the door; Smellerbee snorted, took Longshot by the wrist, and led him outside.


End file.
